


The Traveler

by Lady Divine (fhartz91)



Category: Glee
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, Bounty Hunters, Branding, Grief/Mourning, Kissing, M/M, Romance, Sexual Content, Sexual Slavery, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2018-02-19 06:51:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2378888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhartz91/pseuds/Lady%20Divine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt's days are numbered. He’s walked for weeks, banished to the outlying lands of the principality where he was once kept as a slave in the regent’s household. But now he is a free man searching for his father. Along the road, a man on horseback takes pity on him, and gives him room and board in exchange for his body for the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the anon prompt ‘slave’. Dystopian AU, loosely based on historical themes. Warning for talk of extreme hunger, mention of sex work, mention of branding, underage, age difference.

Kurt stops on the dry, dirt road when the leather strap on his sandal bites into his skin. He sighs hard, blowing through the pain, clearing his mind of self-pity to keep from shedding any tears. Water is precious on these dusty flats, and besides, he doesn’t have any energy to spare for crying. He needs to find a place to bed down for the night, but he’s filthy and poor, and in this area of the outlying lands there is nothing around but dirt, dirt, and more dirt. No farms, no houses, no villages.

Nothing but acres and acres of loose dust baking beneath a scorching hot sun.

That’s what banishment to the outlying lands means - a lifetime of nothing, and not living long enough to appreciate it anyway.

But even with the promise of death as close as the bend in the road up ahead, Kurt can say it is far better than the life he had.

Better to die free than live a slave.

Kurt bends over at the waist to examine his feet since lifting his leg is not an option. He could no more balance on one leg than he could carry the moon, and if he sits down on the ground, more than likely he won’t be able to stand up again. He blinks the dust from his eyes and focuses his blurring vision on his feet. His sandals are worn through, though they weren’t exactly new to begin with.

As a freed man, he was given one pair of sandals, a scratchy old tunic, a single bladder full of water, and five gold coins (which he had sewn into the hem of his tunic for safe keeping). Then he was tied up, blindfolded, tossed roughly into the back of a cart, and dragged to the outlying lands. The masters didn’t even stop the horse when they rolled him from the cart onto the road and galloped away. It was only thanks to an obliging jagged rock that he managed to cut free from his binds. That’s how he ended up walking his present road, banished to the farthest reaches of the principality, which in some cases amounts to a death sentence. Men much older than he and much more suited for life outside the manor walls were often found dead within days.

Kurt has already lasted two weeks, but his hope faded a few days ago when his bladder gave its last drop of water.

He still had a chance as long as his feet lasted the walk to a viable town where he might find work, but they are cut and bleeding from the too tight leather straps. He wiggles his toes and winces. He might as well not be wearing any shoes at all, but he dares not take them off until the sun has fully set. The dirt out on these barren plains gets unusually hot beneath the midday sun, and he doesn’t need to add more blisters to his already cracked skin.

He looks down at his body and lets out a moan of despair. Dirt is caked all over his clothes, his skin, and under his nails. He feels it in his hair when he scratches his scalp and the harsh grit of it in his eyes when he blinks. He tastes it on his tongue when he licks his chapped lips. It stings and itches everywhere it touches. This invasive dirt is a torture all its own, but at least it keeps the sun from burning his pale skin.

Kurt stands up straight – the weight of his shoulders fighting to keep his back bowed - and looks out towards the horizon. He sees nothing but the ground undulating in the distance like a wave of cool water. He knows it’s the sun playing a trick on his eyes and that frightens him. He might have to accept death out here, but he doesn’t want to go mad first.

The ground vibrates – a light tremor which swiftly turns into a steady pounding. These heavy footfalls he hears coming his way are not a mirage. His ears prick up to catch hold of the sound. They shake the ground beneath his feet and echo like thunder even though they belong to only one horse and rider. Kurt had not prepared for this. He forces himself not to panic, shoving down the sudden urge to run for his life. There is nowhere on this road for him to hide and trying to outrun a horse is futile. So he stands in place and waits to see what fate will bring him.

He sees the man first – his wind-blown brown hair whipping around his face, his deeply tanned skin, his brown coat hanging open over a faded white tunic, legs wrapped in dark colored pants - sitting atop a lilac roan stallion, whose coat melds seamlessly with the clouds of dust its hooves kick up. He’s traveling in a diagonal path away from Kurt, and for a split second, Kurt thinks the man might overlook him. But then the rider sits higher in his saddle, and the horse turns and gallops straight for him.

Kurt feels the panic returning but he holds his ground.

The man slows his horse to a trot as he comes closer, peering through the dust at Kurt - his eyes particularly piercing as he approaches - and then circles Kurt with his horse to examine him from all angles. If Kurt could have gone cold, he would have, but at the moment everything inside his body is tired and numb. Regardless, he starts to tremble. He doesn’t need to escape one slave master to end up being kidnapped by another.

The man halts his horse and jumps down off its back, walking toward Kurt with a perplexed expression on his face, his green eyes raking over Kurt’s body as if this man knows him. Kurt looks back, trying to spark a memory, but he can’t recall ever seeing this man before. Kurt has been with a lot of men in his young life, but he is sure he would have remembered this one.

The man stops his inspection, staring openly into Kurt’s eyes.

“My God,” the man utters. “I thought you might be a ghost.”

His voice is raw, but soothing to Kurt’s ears.

“No, sir,” Kurt says, his own voice hoarse from breathing in a field’s worth of dust. “I’m not a ghost.”

“I can see that,” the man snaps lightly. He taps his foot in the dirt, his hands locked firmly on his hips. “Where are you headed?”

Kurt doesn’t know how to answer that question. Truthfully, he’s searching for his father, but he has no clue where to start looking. Kurt hasn’t seen his father since he was taken by the regent’s soldiers so many years ago – taken and made to serve in the regent’s house in order to pay off a debt his father owed.

“Nowhere,” Kurt answers. “I’m just trying to find a bed for the night, maybe earn a hot meal.”

The man narrows his gaze at Kurt.

“What is it you can do?” he asks.

“I can sing,” Kurt answers, grimacing when the rough state of his voice begs to differ. “I can cook, sew…”

The man chuckles and shakes his head.

“You sound like one of those pampered brats the regent keeps in his manor house,” the man teases. “I hear they’re good for nothing but sitting on silk pillows, looking pretty, and fucking.”

The words sting; Kurt’s eyes drop to his swollen feet.

“Oh, I see,” the man says, sounding genuinely apologetic when he realizes his tremendous faux pas. He had his suspicions about this boy’s origins, but he didn’t imagine he was right. The man continues to stare, his green eyes peering thoughtfully at Kurt. “How old are you?”

“I just turned seventeen,” Kurt says down to his feet.

The man clicks his tongue, mulling over some unspoken judgment.

“Are you a runaway, then?” the man asks, his voice sounding gruffer. “I don’t need any trouble, especially from the regent.”

“No, sir,” Kurt says, his voice becoming weaker with every word. “I am free.”

“Hmm,” the man says with a suspicious jerk of his head. “Let me see your mark,” he commands.

Kurt bristles. He doesn’t like showing it. It’s vulgar and disgusting, and the wicked man who branded him left the iron on his skin too long. The scar goes way too deep. Many freed slaves will eventually outgrow their brand, but not Kurt. Such a devastating mark on his alabaster skin – he will surely have it for the rest of his life.

But at least this man is kind enough to ask instead of manhandling Kurt, which would be his right.

 _Free man_ is just a title for an ex-slave. It carries with it few liberties.

Kurt pulls at the collar of his tunic and twists his torso to reveal the mark on his shoulder, and the man in front of him hisses sympathetically.

“Well, that was uncalled for,” he mutters, reaching out a gentle hand and tracing the painful looking burn with his finger. Kurt’s first instinct is to recoil, not from this man’s touch, but from his kindness, his sympathy. It’s foreign to Kurt, but Kurt knows it will most likely not last long.

That realization is more painful than his mark.

Sensing Kurt’s reticence, the man pulls his hand away, and Kurt drops the collar of his tunic, shrinking back a little. The man chews the inside of his cheek as he watches Kurt, who begins to sway unsteadily on his feet. Kurt hadn’t intended on being stopped this long. Momentum was really the only thing keeping him moving anyway. Standing still like this, he’s not sure how he’s going to take the first step that will continue him back on his way when this man leaves.

“How about this,” the man says, “give me your company for the evening, and I’ll get you a bath, a meal, and a place to sleep for the night.”

Kurt had hoped for outright generosity, but he expected this. _This_ he was used to. He could probably negotiate with the man for one of his gold coins since he still has all five. He had begged and bartered for his meals the past two weeks. But if this man knows he has one gold coin, he might kill him in expectation of more.

Kurt’s intention is to bring those five gold coins home to his father, so he keeps their presence a secret.

Besides, his life is worth more than his body.

“I can do that,” Kurt says. He lifts his foot in an attempt to take a step toward the man’s horse, but his wobbly knees give way and he falls. The man rushes forward and catches Kurt in his arms. Kurt holds his breath, praying that this man doesn’t think Kurt is too weak to hold up his end of their bargain.

“Whoa there,” the man says, lifting Kurt in his arms, carrying him to the patiently waiting horse as if he weighed no more than a handful of sand. “Let’s get you off this road before you collapse.”

Kurt tries to nod, but his head doesn’t move. At least he can speak.

“Do you live around here?” Kurt asks as the man helps him up onto the horse.

“No,” the man answers with a chuckle. “Look around, boy. No one in their right mind lives here.”

“Kurt,” Kurt mumbles, annoyed at being referred to as _boy_. Kurt doesn’t wish to be annoyed with this man.

“What’s that?” the man asks, looking up at where the frail boy sits on the horse.

“Kurt,” he says, clearing his throat, trying to be heard. “My name is Kurt.”

“Kurt,” the man repeats. “Well, since we’re doing names, you can call me Sebastian.”

“Sebastian,” Kurt says. It’s a nice name. An unpretentious name. A name with a heart and a backbone to it.

Sebastian likes the way Kurt repeats his name, even though his voice sounds painfully weak.

 “Anyway,” Sebastian continues, eager to be on their way, “I’m a traveler, passing through. I have a room at an inn up ahead.”

“There’s a village?” Kurt mutters, exhaustion coming to claim him the moment he sat on the animal’s back. Sebastian climbs onto the horse behind him and wraps his arms around Kurt’s waist. Kurt is used to men touching him, but this feels different. It’s not sordid or demanding. It carries with it memories of love and home and family.

“Yes,” Sebastian says. “Not too far, actually. Had you walked through the night, you would have reached it.”

 _No, I wouldn’t have,_ Kurt thinks, settling back into the man’s embrace and drifting off to sleep as the horse starts to move _. I would have been dead before morning._

* * *

 

Sebastian walks his horse carefully over the hard-packed ground to allow Kurt more time to sleep. He figures relaxing in the cool evening air will do the exhausted boy good. As night begins to fall, Sebastian takes one last look at Kurt in the fading light. He glances down into the boy’s face and brushes the hair away from his eyes. Kurt looks peaceful in sleep, but no less pained.

 _Too young_ , Sebastian thinks, tracing with one gentle fingertip the dirty lines etched into Kurt’s face. _Too young for all of this._

The noises of the village – people talking loudly, dogs barking, cows lowing, and horses pulling carriages - don’t wake Kurt when they arrive at the inn. Sebastian stables his horse, wraps Kurt in his saddle blanket, and carries the tired boy up to his room. He opens the thick wood door with one hand and carries Kurt inside, laying him down on the bed. Sebastian assumes that this poor creature he plucked off the road will sleep through the night, but Kurt pops awake instinctively the moment the door clicks shut.

Kurt has learned from experience not to fall asleep in the same room as his _lovers_ , and having slept so deeply as they traveled, he has no immediate memory of where he is or who he’s with. He scuttles across the bed on his back, his eyes adjusting to the faint candlelight as he tries to remember.

“It’s alright,” Sebastian says, keeping his distance. “No one’s going to hurt you here.”

Kurt looks at Sebastian, eyes wide with a fear that borders on terror, but Sebastian only shakes his head.

“I’ll have a bath and a meal brought in,” he says sadly, collecting some clothes layered over a nearby chair. “You can bathe and eat in private. There are clean clothes in the trunk.” Sebastian gestures to a weathered wooden box in the corner. “There’s a pair of pants in there for the night. We’ll find something for you to wear for tomorrow so you can trash those sandals and that tunic.”

Kurt shakes his head, his tense muscles relaxing, calming as Sebastian speaks – the man’s voice bringing back Kurt’s recent memories of their encounter on the road.

“My clothes are…”

“Ruined,” Sebastian says. “And even if they weren’t, do you think people don’t know what you are just because you keep your mark covered? Those clothes give you away.”

Kurt knows that what Sebastian says is true, but he continues to shake his head. He doesn’t know how he’s going to repay this man. Will his body be enough?

“But, I…”

“For God’s sake, Kurt, stop being so damned stubborn!” Sebastian says, raising his voice to Kurt when he hadn’t meant to. “Do you think I’m trying to rob you? Do you think I care about your gold?”

Kurt shudders at the mention of his hidden money.

“How---how do you know…”

“Everyone knows about the deal you guys get,” Sebastian says with regret, lowering his voice. “It’s no secret around here.” Sebastian stops himself before he says something else unintentionally hurtful. He blows a heavy breath through pursed lips and runs a hand through his unkempt hair. “I have an extra purse in that trunk. You can keep your money in that. It’ll be safer that way.”

Kurt swallows hard and nods.

“Thank you,” he says, pulling his knees up to his chest.

“You’re welcome,” Sebastian replies. He backs out of the room and shuts the door behind him.

Kurt sits quietly and waits, not entirely sure what he should do. Should he really stick around, or should he grab the clothes and run? He wouldn’t get far if he did, he knows that. He had been able to find shelter a few nights on the road before he traveled to the thick of the dirt flats – the most barren spot -but those were from friendly older women who looked at him and saw a son or a grandson. He hasn’t had to share a room with a man since his banishment, and he had hoped he wouldn’t have to again. But his limbs shake and his head swims when he even considers getting up and leaving, so his choice to stay is pretty much made up for him.

A few minutes later, he hears a knock at the door. Kurt stares at it, not sure if he should get off the bed and answer it, but the door opens on its own, and from the hallway outside he hears Sebastian’s voice speaking commands. A tub is carried in by two strong men, along with several buckets of water to fill it with. A portly lady with sugar-and-cinnamon hair tied to the top of her head in a messy bun toddles in behind the men with a plate of food and a mug in her hands. She sets them both down on a small table in the corner. She seems to be the only one of the three who notices Kurt huddled on the bed, and she smiles at him, her eyes shimmering with tears when she notices how thin he is, how horribly destitute.

As quickly as the trio comes in, they leave. The door closes again and Kurt is alone.

He turns his head toward the table – to the mug of drink and the plate of food beckoning him with its savory aroma filling the air. His first instinct is to attack the food. It smells so incredible that his stomach responds immediately with a loud growl, but Kurt’s skin is crawling all over. He knows he’ll never be able to properly enjoy his meal if he can’t stop thinking about the muck embedded in his pores, so he leaves his meal for the time being, despite being starved to tears. He tears the tunic off his skin, relishing the sound of the ripping fabric, likening it to the breaking of his chains. He is more than happy that he’ll never have to wear it again. He leaves the garment on the floor in tatters, then he climbs into the tub.

The bath water is tepid, but it’s warmer than any bath he’s had in a long time, and the tub is deep enough to sink his whole body into. On the floor of the tub, beneath the water, Kurt finds a bar of soap and a cleaning cloth. He wonders how much extra Sebastian had to pay for it, but Kurt is glad to find it. There is no way that plain water will get rid of all the dirt on his body. As it turns out, even with the soap and cloth, Kurt has to scrub himself through three times to get rid of all the grime, but once it’s gone, he feels lighter. He barely recognizes the color of his own pale skin.

Once he is clean and dry, he rummages through the trunk for a pair of pants and the purse. There are a great many clothes in this trunk, more than necessary for one adult man, and the various sizes don’t make any sense. Kurt manages to find a light cotton pair of pants that fit him near to perfectly, along with the purse, which is made of soft leather and tied at the top. He gathers up his coins from the shredded garment and drops them inside the pouch. He ties it tight and then hides it beneath the mattress of the bed.

His food is surprisingly still hot by the time he finally sits down to eat. He picks at the offerings with his fork. The wood plate in front of him is heaped high with meat, potatoes, and bread, all slathered in some sort of brown gravy. Kurt’s mouth waters at the sight and he longs to gulp it down, but he is forced into taking tiny bites. He has eaten so little in the past few years of his enslavement that he’s about full after a few mouthfuls, but he eats as much as he can manage, unsure of when he’ll see a hot meal again.

Sebastian doesn’t return to the room until late in the evening. When he does, he’s bathed and Kurt suspects he’s eaten. He’s shirtless, but wearing the pants he brought with him when he left. He dumps his dirty clothes in a pile by the door. He doesn’t look at Kurt right away, instead making a beeline for the bed, groaning loudly as he climbs beneath the covers. He scoots to the far side and rolls onto his back, sighing with relief at the feel of the soft sheets against his skin. He stares up at the ceiling, breathing in and out for long moments, his eyelids fluttering shut, and Kurt thinks that maybe Sebastian has forgotten him, but then Sebastian turns on his side and stares at the boy watching him from the table.

“Well, come on.” Sebastian moves the blanket aside. “Don’t be shy.” He pats the empty spot on the mattress and grins, his green eyes shining in the low candlelight. Kurt tilts his head and looks at him, not quite understanding. Sebastian went to bed dressed. Most men tear off their clothes before they get into bed with him, impatient to get on top of him. It’s odd, but it doesn’t mean anything, Kurt reminds himself. Dressed or no, Sebastian still wants what he wants. It’s nothing to take off a pair of pants to get it. Though dressing Kurt up, making him feel comfortable and safe, seems unnecessarily cruel to Kurt. It would have been better if Sebastian had just forced him to go about the room naked so that Kurt couldn’t forget for one moment what he is, and why he’s here.

Kurt walks over to the bed, his head bowed, his eyes cast down.

He remembered the men at court liked that - not from the women, just from the boys. Kurt thought it strange, the differences between the sex slaves that were kept in the regent’s manor house. The regent liked strong women but submissive young boys. Submissive - Kurt could do that very well, and he was a court favorite until he tried to escape. He didn’t get far. He was captured, tried as a traitor, and sentenced to two years of hard labor.

They could have sentenced him to a lifetime, but being the regent’s favorite had some perks at least.

Labor had hardened him – physically and emotionally. He was no longer the soft-bodied young boy he had been, and therefore unsuitable for sex work in the regent’s house. He had been given the opportunity to spend another year working off his debt, at the end of which he would be granted his freedom.

To many in the regent’s house, freedom is not a prize, so they do not seek it, but it is all Kurt ever wanted.

Kurt tries not to think about any of that past life as he follows Sebastian onto the bed. He climbs onto the mattress, and then on top of the reclining man, straddling Sebastian’s hips. Kurt chances a glance down at Sebastian’s face. In the dim, golden candlelight, Sebastian looks handsome, kind, and thoroughly befuddled. Sebastian makes no move, so Kurt leans forward to kiss him, but Sebastian stops him, placing his hands on Kurt’s shoulders.

“Uh…that’s not what I meant,” Sebastian says.

Kurt sits straight up, embarrassed but mostly confused.

“But…but you said…”

“I know what I said,” Sebastian cuts in, “but I didn’t mean that.”

Kurt frowns. He has never been rejected before; he doesn’t know how to take it. As relieved as he should feel, he isn’t sure that in this instance he likes it.

“Then…what?”

Sebastian shifts his eyes away as if he doesn’t want to explain.

“Let me hold you,” Sebastian says. “I just…want to sleep next to you.”

Kurt doesn’t move, stunned by Sebastian’s request. Sebastian wraps his muscular arms around Kurt’s thin frame and lifts the boy off his body, setting Kurt carefully down beside him on the bed. He kisses Kurt on the forehead and then turns Kurt away from him, burying his nose into the boy’s hair.

Kurt feels his heart race. He has never slept side by side with another man. Sex, yes, but not sleep, and suddenly Kurt’s body tingles with a combination of anticipation and alarm.

This feels too intimate.

“Why am I here,” Kurt asks meekly, “if you don’t want sex? Why did you do all this for me?”

Sebastian runs a hand up Kurt’s spine, delicately following the contours of the too sharp bones with his fingertips. Sebastian had hoped he wouldn’t need to explain – that the offer of a meal and a bed would be enough to secure what he wanted. But he hadn’t spoken of it to anyone, and it might be nice if someone else knew.

“You’re here so I can remember,” Sebastian says.

Kurt sighs softly at the sensation of fingers on his skin, stroking up and then returning down his back.

“Remember?” Kurt asks. “Remember what?”

Sebastian’s fingers stop, and Kurt curses at himself for pressing if it meant that Sebastian would stop touching him. But Kurt feels Sebastian’s breath on his skin. It’s almost as if Kurt can feel Sebastian thinking.

“I had a husband,” Sebastian whispers, “and I had a son. I lost them a long time ago, and I have been without companionship ever since. That is why you’re here.”

Kurt nods, understanding what it means to miss someone you love, but he’s still a little lost.

“Do I remind you of your son?”

Sebastian laughs so dryly that it’s barely a laugh at all.

“I can’t give you an answer to that question,” he says.

“Why not?”

Sebastian sighs - the rush of warm air heating Kurt’s cooling skin, causing goose bumps to form.

“It would be…indelicate,” Sebastian replies.

Kurt snuggles back into Sebastian’s chest, feeling Sebastian’s skin press against his, and Sebastian wraps his arms around him, taking full advantage of the boy’s closeness.

“Please?” Kurt pleads.

Sebastian drops a kiss onto the crown of Kurt’s head while he thinks. He’s gone this far; why should he stop now?

“My husband and I…we knew each other a long time,” Sebastian explains. “We loved each other at a very young age. You remind me of the boy he was when we first met.”

Kurt chews on his lip while he tries to imagine Sebastian younger, less rugged, more carefree, and in love.

In love with a young man who resembled himself.

Kurt should stop his questioning. He’s only known Sebastian for a few hours and besides, an interrogation is no way to thank him for his kindness. But Kurt’s curiosity is eating away at him. It takes a minute for Kurt to build up the courage, but he asks another question.

“What…what happened to them?” Kurt asks.

Sebastian kisses Kurt’s head again – a short, quick peck this time.

“I’m not going to tell you that,” Sebastian says over a yawn.

Kurt turns his head, craning his neck to see the man behind him.

“Why not?” Kurt asks.

Sebastian places a delicate kiss to Kurt’s shoulder, surprisingly soft lips brushing right over Kurt’s hideous mark.

“Because you have demons of your own to do battle with,” Sebastian says, licking his fingers and reaching out a hand to snuff out the nearest candle. “I refuse to burden you with mine as well.”

Sebastian falls silent, cradling Kurt in his arms and rocking him slowly. Seconds later, Sebastian is fast asleep.

Kurt lays wide awake, lonely and ill at-ease in the room with Sebastian asleep behind him. It’s quiet, even with the main dining hall of the inn right below them filled with patrons eating and drinking and getting raucously intoxicated. But the room is still, with Sebastian’s breathing soft and even, fanning over his skin, the man’s arms strong around him – lulling Kurt into a sense of security, false as it may turn out to be. Kurt burns with curiosity over Sebastian’s final words, but he knows he will get no answers tonight. He lets himself join Sebastian in sleep so he won’t feel quite so alone.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for anxiety.

Kurt sleeps straight through till the next afternoon. He usually wakes before sunrise – that was the schedule he kept in the regent’s house, but he can’t help himself sleeping in. He’s exhausted for one, but the bed he’s in is soft, and the body beside him warm and comforting. He passes the night without dreaming - his mind, for once, completely blank.

It’s a rare luxury for Kurt not to dream. His subconscious mind has not been his friend for quite some time, as it seems to delight in torturing him with memories of all the things he’s been forced to do, all the punishments he’s suffered, all the pain, all the losses…

Sebastian’s body pressed against his, his arms wrapped around Kurt’s body, keeps the nightmares away.

Kurt doesn’t mind a dreamless sleep. Back at the manor, he thought of it the same as being dead. Even with his strong spirit, his will to fight, sometimes Kurt prayed for death, especially when he had no food in his stomach, or the night was cold and his head burned with fever. Feeling dead might frighten some people, but not Kurt. He doesn’t mind feeling dead. There isn’t anything so great waiting for him in sleep that he should prize it anyway. He’s fine disappearing from life for a while.

As he begins to wake, he realizes that he will have to leave Sebastian soon, and he’s not looking forward to dreams again.

Kurt pulls himself from his deep sleep in stages. First, he feels the tingle of cool air against his skin. Then, the glow of sunlight kissing his cheek. Finally, his mind starts to comprehend the world around him – smells of food from somewhere nearby, the sound of people talking, more hushed than the night before, and of animals clucking and mooing and lowing. He wiggles his toes and fingers, scrunches his nose, shakes his head. Every piece of him wakes in one way or another before he manages to pry open his eyes. When he drags himself completely from sleep, he sees that Sebastian is gone.

Finding himself alone in this room, Kurt panics. Sebastian wouldn’t just leave him, would he? Was this all a ploy to stick Kurt with what must be an exorbitant bill? How would Kurt escape? He knew better, didn’t he? When he first saw Sebastian, he knew that going with him would be trouble. Why did he do it? Why did he give in?

Simple. Because he would have been dead if he didn’t.

But now he may belong to the owner of this inn.

As he feared, he left one master and walked naïvely into the arms of another.

Just a slave, that’s all he would ever be.

Just a slave, despite Sebastian’s heartbreaking story and his sweet words.

Kurt stares at the heavy door, waiting for someone from the inn to come collect him. He holds his breath, listening for sounds of footsteps pounding down the hall, coming his way. Paranoia creeps over him, weeding around his brain, sharp thorns pricking him, punishing him for his stupidity. He thinks he hears a scratching noise and his eyes move in search of it. He spots a mouse, probably as frightened as him, scuttling along the wall. It stops in its running and turns to look at him, black eyes staring, nose twitching, front paws curled against his body, chest heaving frantically. They stare at one another, both feeling trapped, but not for long. The mouse makes its break, leaping forward and ducking behind a large wooden object. Kurt stares at it, waiting to see if the mouse will reappear. It takes a moment for Kurt to register what the large object is.

Sebastian’s trunk.

His wooden trunk filled with clothes. Beside it sit a pair of boots, and beside that a saddle. Kurt’s eyes sweep around again, and he notices other things around the room – personal items – that Sebastian would not leave behind.

Sebastian left – but he didn’t abandon Kurt. He’d be back. He had to return for his things at least. He probably had some business and figured that Kurt knew his way out.

He didn’t say goodbye. Somehow that doesn’t make Kurt feel any better.

Kurt looks over at the table in the corner where he left his dinner from the night before. If it’s still there, he might as well finish it, cold and congealed though it probably was. He could take it down to the kitchen and have it warmed up. He’s sure that nice lady who brought him his food last night would do that for him, but he doesn’t want to risk drawing attention to himself.

It’s not all that safe for him here without Sebastian around.

But the plate is gone, replaced by a bowl with a different plate over it, and beside it, another mug. Kurt climbs down off the bed, looking left and right as he crosses the room, still partially expecting someone to leap out and grab him. He turns the plate over and is greeted with a steaming bowl of meal – a pat of butter and a mound of brown sugar melting on top. The mug beside it is full of milk – ice cold – which meant that Sebastian didn’t leave too long ago…or someone came in while he slept.

He hopes it’s the first. He’s a bit wary of people being in a room with him while he sleeps.

He climbs into the chair and sits down to enjoy his breakfast, letting the smell of warm meal seep into his senses and calm his anxiously thrumming heart. He tries to stop himself from smiling, from being too relieved, from letting this feel _right_ to him. He has to remind himself constantly that it won’t last. Sebastian will return eventually and they’ll go their separate ways.

 _Go their separate ways_.

Kurt’s heart starts to race again.

What exactly did he think he was going to do when he left this inn? He had a goal, but he didn’t have a clue how to obtain it. Sebastian had been right when he said that Kurt was pretty much good for nothing. The regent took a poor farmer’s son and turned him into an ornament, a plaything. He was kept on display, taught that his body didn’t belong to him, his feelings and emotions didn’t exist. They tried to take his mind, too. They almost succeeded, but during one particularly harsh punishment, he discovered a recess in his mind that beatings and starvation couldn’t reach. In it he kept the few memories he had of his mother and father, of the farm where he was born, the animals they kept, the small pond where his mother taught him how to swim.... Kurt could no longer recall their voices – that memory had been lost to him years ago – but their faces never faded.

He stirs the butter and the sugar into the warm meal, watching them swirl into the white mush, melting together. It smells like heaven and his mouth waters. He wasn’t hungry when he first woke up, but now he’s close to raising the bowl to his mouth and slurping the whole thing down his gullet. Fighting those urges, he picks up a spoon and takes a first tentative taste. He lets the meal bathe his tongue, lets it sit and dissolve in his mouth until the sweet taste of the sugar and the savory accent of the butter absorb completely, and then he swallows. After that bite, he eats in earnest, his body shaking with hunger. He shovels warm meal into his mouth, spoonful after spoonful filling his stomach more than he did with dinner the night before. In between mouthfuls of meal and gulps of milk, he hears another slight scratching, but this time at the door.

He stops, paralyzed for a second like that mouse on the floor, again imagining burly men storming in and dragging him from the room, but those images are shorter lived, especially when the sound of a familiar voice calls from outside the door.

“Dearie?” It’s the woman from the night before – the woman with the red and silver hair. She scratches at the door again and Kurt swallows his mouthful of meal quickly to answer.

“Com…come in,” he calls, his voice not up to par enough to yell too loudly.

She seems to hear because the door swings open and she fills the doorway, looking in at Kurt with a motherly smile on her face.

“It’s nice to see you up, dear,” she says, taking a step inside the door. Kurt’s face falls.

“Were…were you in here earlier?” Kurt stammers. “Did you bring in the food?”

“Oh, no,” she says, seeming to understand his unspoken unease. “Your gentleman friend brought it up for you. Told us not to bother you, except that he gave me this...” She takes another step into the room and holds a folded slip of paper out to Kurt. Two steps through the door she stands and waits for Kurt to take it.

He climbs down out of the chair and walks over to her. Stopping a distance away, he reaches out his hand and takes the letter from her outstretched hand. She smiles sadly when he does.

“He told me what it said in case you…” she stops, chewing on her words carefully, but Kurt knows what she’s going to say.

“I can read,” Kurt says with a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

The woman sighs, staring at Kurt with a renewed longing, as if seeing someone else in his eyes.

She looks at him close to the way Sebastian did when Sebastian first saw him out on the dirt road.

She smiles at him and nods. She looks like she’s about to say something else, but then decides against it. She backs slowly out of the room and, looking her last, leaves, closing the door behind her.

Kurt looks down at the folded square of paper in his hands. Feeling it, touching it, knowing that Sebastian had written it for him, fills Kurt with a giddy euphoria that he despises himself for. A day. It took a day for this man to get under his skin. A day to undo all the work Kurt had done as a slave for the regent, mentally preparing for freedom – all the walls he built up, all the defenses.

A handsome face and a few kind words had nearly torn them all down.

Kurt hadn’t realized that he was this weak.

His hands start to tremble, clutching the paper in his fingers tighter than he realizes.

 _Stupid_ he says to himself. _So blind and so stupid_.

He was betraying himself.

He _was_ worthless.

Kurt opens the letter and reads Sebastian’s surprisingly neat writing as tears start to fill his eyes.

_Kurt –_

_I’m sorry I won’t be there when you wake. I have business to finish here before I can move on. Please stay, have breakfast, relax. I would like to have another chance to talk to you so please, don’t leave._

_If you do, I’ll understand._

_Sebastian_

Kurt’s skills at reading aren’t the best. He’d been taught but rarely had the opportunity to practice. He stumbles through the letter, re-reading it again and again to make sure he understands every word.

 _Stay_.

Sebastian asked him to stay.

***

It’s closing in on twilight when Sebastian returns to the inn. He stables his horse and races up to his room with agitated footsteps, bounding in through the door without knocking, calling out for Kurt the whole way.

“Kurt! Kurt!” Sebastian bursts into the dimly lit room, head turning left and right to find him, which he does, lying on his stomach on the bed, knees bent, feet swinging in the air, lost in thought. “Oh, Kurt,” Sebastian says, sounding relieved, rushing in rambles to explain his absence. “I didn’t know I would be this late. I swear. I didn’t intend…” Kurt’s shy smile cuts Sebastian off, and with that one sweet look, Sebastian’s distress bleeds away. Sebastian’s breathing races as he watches Kurt, stretched out like a cat on his bed, lazily gazing up at him. The image makes it hard for Sebastian to remember to speak. “I…I didn’t want you to leave.”

Kurt nods, not asking for any explanation. He figures that Sebastian’s business is Sebastian’s business.

Kurt should have been gone by now anyway.

Kurt looks over the man standing above him, his lips parted, breathing less heavily, his hair and clothes dusty from the trail. Beneath the dirt Kurt can see a bruise starting on his jaw, but Kurt decides to overlook it. There are dozens of ways to get bruised up like that while riding a horse.

“Just so you know,” Kurt says, “I can read a little.” He pulls the letter from his pocket and waves it through the air. Sebastian squints in the low light to see it better. The paper looks a great deal more worn out than it did when he scrawled it out this morning. He wonders how many times Kurt looked it over. Did he carry it with him all day long? Sebastian imagines Kurt alone in the room, the letter clutched in his hand, and his heart wrenches. It hadn’t dawned on him when he woke this morning – lighthearted, in fact, his entire body weightless, having had an incredible night’s sleep – that Kurt would not be okay on his own.

Not until the sun began to set and Sebastian was traveling back to the village on that same dusty road – the one he had met a half-dead Kurt on – did the thought occur to him.

The poor boy had been violated, beaten, burned, starved, and Sebastian left him alone, in a strange place, with just a note.

Sebastian doesn’t know if he should forgive himself, but from the smile growing on Kurt’s face, a smile of guarded affection, it looked to Sebastian as though Kurt had.

“They taught you how to read in the regent’s house?”

“No,” Kurt says, returning the letter to his pocket, dropping his gaze as he does so Sebastian can’t see how his eyes water, “my mom did.”

“Ah,” Sebastian says for lack of anything better, anything insightful, to say. “I’m sorry that I assumed…”

“You didn’t know,” Kurt says, waving Sebastian’s worry away. Tension settles in the room, a combination of unspoken words and miscommunications. Sebastian stands, stiff-legged from riding, skin itching up a storm, and one other thing that he doesn’t want to think of – something that makes his hand’s twitch inside his gloves.

“Uh…I need to go bathe.” Sebastian looks down at his dirty clothes as if to confirm this fact, eyes shifting to glance at his gloved hands – rough, brown leather gloves spattered with dots of fresh blood. Kurt hasn’t turned yet to look back at him so Sebastian removes his gloves hurriedly and stuffs them in his clothes trunk. “Did you want a bath?”

“I’m good,” Kurt says with a grateful smile. “I didn’t really do anything today, and I’m sure you don’t need the expense.”

Sebastian’s face falls a bit at Kurt’s concern, but he doesn’t try to persuade him. Sebastian returns Kurt’s smile weakly and reaches for the door.

“I won’t take long,” he says, already halfway out the door when Kurt speaks.

“You…you don’t have to leave,” Kurt says, walking toward the doorway. Sebastian swallows hard and looks up, watching the barefoot boy approach. Kurt has an innocence in his darkening blue eyes that shrouds so many complicated thoughts and feelings, Sebastian can almost see the weight of them bowing his shoulders. “I don’t mind if you stay and bathe in here.” Sebastian breaks eye contact, looking down at his feet, berating himself quietly for actually considering this boy’s offer. “It seems a shame,” Kurt continues when Sebastian stays silent, reaching the door and putting a hand over his, “that you should be exiled from your own room.”

“It’s not for you that I leave, little one,” Sebastian says, looking at Kurt’s hand, thin and pale, covering his. He stares for a time, then his green eyes glance away, tracing a path down the hallway in front of him. “But, I’ll return quickly and take supper with you, if you’d like.”

“Yes,” Kurt says, moving his hand away. “I would like that very much.”

Sebastian nods and walks off, with Kurt’s eyes watching him from the doorway, holding tight to the door to keep from following behind.

When Sebastian returns, he’s carrying two plates balanced in his left hand – one stacked on top of the other – and a large pitcher in his right, with his dirty clothes lying across his arm. He knocks on the door with his foot and Kurt runs to open it for him. Kurt takes the clothes off his arm without being asked and Sebastian nods in thanks, concentrating too much on not spilling their dinner to spare a word. He heads straight for the table while Kurt piles the clothes in the corner by the door. Sebastian places the plates down and Kurt separates them, setting a plate in front of each chair.

“I hope you don’t mind sharing a mug,” Sebastian says, pouring milk from the pitcher into Kurt’s mug from earlier. “They didn’t have another downstairs.”

“I don’t mind,” Kurt says, watching the white liquid fall into the cup. “You sure have a thing for milk. I would have guessed that you drink ale or something.”

“ _You_ need the milk,” Sebastian comments. “It’ll put weight on you. You’re thin as a bean. It’s unhealthy.”

Kurt grabs the mug when Sebastian stops pouring and takes a sip to hide his smile.

He could hear the _father_ in Sebastian’s voice right then.

Sebastian sets out a fork and a cloth napkin for each of them. Kurt waits behind his plate for Sebastian to eat. Sebastian smiles when he notices.

“You don’t have to wait on me,” he says, motioning to Kurt’s food with his chin.

“It would be rude to eat before the founder of the meal,” Kurt says, the reply sounding rote, rehearsed. Sebastian doesn’t let it show on his face the way Kurt’s automatic response bothers him.

He wonders how many times they beat that rule into him.

For being the regent’s favorite, Kurt appears to be quite beaten down. Could that have happened after he was captured for running away? If not, if this is the way Kurt lived the majority of his life, Sebastian would hate to see how the regent’s least favored slaves are treated.

Sebastian sits, and with Kurt’s eyes on him, he raises a roll from his plate and brings it to his mouth. Sebastian watches Kurt back, waiting a breath with the bread poised at his lips, but Kurt doesn’t move.

 _Fuck_ , Sebastian thinks, taking a bite, not wanting to see Kurt sit at heel like a dog any longer.

Kurt takes a bite of his bread while Sebastian chews the bite he’s taken, gazing down at his plate, a multitude of thoughts clouding his eyes.

“I have a proposition to make,” Sebastian says seriously. “Why don’t you come along with me?”

Kurt stops chewing and looks up at Sebastian, who seems fully engrossed in his meal, even with the words that just left his mouth.

“Wh---what?” Kurt stammers, dropping his bread to his plate. “What do you mean, come with you?”

Sebastian smirks as he slices a hunk of cheese from the block between them. He breaks the hunk in half, putting a piece on the edge of Kurt’s plate.

“I thought it was kind of a simple concept,” Sebastian says, his words carrying a little bite. “I’m leaving here tomorrow and I’m offering you the opportunity to accompany me.” Sebastian looks up and catches the surprise on Kurt’s face. “You’re not entirely healed up,” Sebastian continues, “and I have a cart you can ride in for the time being till you do.”

Shocked, Kurt stares at Sebastian with his eyes wide. Kurt would be a fool not to accept, but how can he?

“I…thank you,” Kurt says, “that’s…but I’m looking for my father.”

Sebastian nods, chewing a bite of his dinner.

“Fair enough,” he says, brushing the crumbs off his hands. “Where is he? I can take you to him.”

Kurt sighs, tearing the piece of bread in his hands into smaller pieces.

“I don’t really know,” Kurt admits. “I haven’t seen him since I was taken. I was only eight.”

Sebastian coughs, nearly choking on the food he was swallowing.

“They train you to be a sex slave at age eight?” Sebastian sputters, too aghast to be tactful, and even though it hurts a bit for Kurt to think about, he smiles at Sebastian’s reaction.

“Not entirely,” Kurt says, toying with his piece of bread more than he’s eating it. “You don’t lose your virginity until you’re twelve or thirteen…” Sebastian’s face blanches and Kurt expects him to look away in disgust. Kurt is used, filthy, and he knows it. But Sebastian doesn’t look away. As horrified as he looks, he stares at Kurt with sad eyes, and Kurt almost feels guilty for bringing it up. “But they do teach you… things…to prepare you…”

“Like?”

“Discipline,” Kurt answers. “Obedience. Self-control.”

“Kurt,” Sebastian says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t…”

“That’s why I need to find my father,” Kurt cuts in, skewered through the heart by the sound of Sebastian’s pity. “I need to know that he’s okay. I’m all he has.”

“So, you don’t know where he is, and you think wandering alone is the best way to find him?” Sebastian scoffs. “How far do you think you’re going to get, Kurt - a young boy like you with five gold coins in his purse?”

Kurt starts to sink inside himself at Sebastian’s light ridicule.

“It’s all I have,” Kurt says quietly.

Sebastian watches Kurt change, falling away, shrinking in his seat. He could bite his tongue out for not being gentler, but this boy needs to learn. Kurt has been stuck behind walls most of his life, and yes, he’s suffered, but life beyond those walls is not much better.

Out in the real world, the punishments can be much worse.

“I think I can help you out,” Sebastian says after a swallow. “I’ve found people with less to go on than that.”

“Are you in the business of finding people?” Kurt concentrates on his diced apple so that the question sounds less desperate and more conversational.

“Not really,” Sebastian says, tearing off a chunk of bread. “I’m a rancher by trade. I have a house and a parcel of land far away from here. But I also have a particular skill for finding people, even if they don’t want to be found.”

Kurt shakes his head.

“I can’t pay you…” Kurt says, ashamed of the position he’s in, the condition Sebastian found him in.

“I’m not asking you to pay me,” Sebastian chuckles. “In fact, _you’ll_ earn your keep, I promise you that. You’ll help tend to my horse when we’re on the trail, and with the cooking and the cleaning and any mending that needs to be done.” Sebastian pauses to take a drink from the mug, his brow drawn, considering his next words, hanging on whether he should speak them or not. He puts the mug back on the table and swallows. “Besides, I’ve been alone a good long time. I’ve forgotten how pleasant it is to have another human around to talk to…another body to lie down next to at night.”

Kurt looks at the remains of his dinner, moving his food around his plate with his fork as he and considers Sebastian’s proposal. Kurt weighs the pros and cons silently in his head as Sebastian finishes his meal, knowing that he’s waiting for an answer. If he takes Sebastian up on his offer, Kurt would be making out far and away better than Sebastian. Kurt would get protection, transportation, meals, a place to sleep, and help finding his father. Sebastian would get…him. Kurt. And not even in the way he’s used to men having him or wanting him. Sure, Sebastian mentioned Kurt helping out with odds and ends, but Kurt knows for sure that’s not why Sebastian wants to keep him around.

Kurt’s only real choices are to join Sebastian and benefit from everything the man’s willing to share, or go it alone.

It doesn’t seem like he has much of a choice.

The best thing for Kurt to do would be to go with him.

“Alright. I’ll…I’ll go with you,” Kurt says, picking at his food with his fork.

Sebastian looks up at Kurt, but Kurt doesn’t raise his eyes to meet his.

“That’s good,” Sebastian says, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “Thank you. Thank you for taking me up on my offer.”

“No,” Kurt says. “Thank you…for everything. You’ve been more than generous.”

Sebastian doesn’t tell Kurt that he’s welcome. It doesn’t seem right. What is Kurt even thanking him for? Treating him like a human being? Keeping him alive? Kurt shouldn’t be thanking him because there’s a selfish root to everything Sebastian's done.

Sebastian isn’t a philanthropist.

If Kurt didn’t look so much like Sebastian’s husband, the boy might be lying dead on the side of the road.

He wouldn’t have been the first boy that Sebastian’s ridden by without a second glance.

A knot forms at the thought, at the guilt that exists within him at such an admission. It grows bigger when he sees the subdued smile on Kurt’s lips.

Sebastian isn’t an evil man, but his life is complicated.

This, too, might end up being a bad idea.

“Well, we’d better pack it in,” Sebastian says, eager to see this day done. “We have an early day tomorrow.”

Sebastian leaves his plate on the table and stands from his seat, heading to bed.

Now that Kurt knows what to expect, he doesn’t hesitate to climb into bed after Sebastian, even though this detail of their arrangement still confuses him. How is sleeping – just sleeping - in another man’s arms earning his keep? There has to be something else. Maybe it’ll come up along the way. Does Sebastian already know and he’s not telling him? Kurt doesn’t like to be kept in the dark, but he’s also in no position to argue.

Kurt lies on the soft mattress with his back to Sebastian, expecting a kiss on his shoulder, or strong arms wrapped around his body. He had never once desired touches when they were forced upon him, but he finds that he’s been longing for them from Sebastian all day.

Instead, Kurt feels Sebastian put a hand to his shoulder and push him face down toward the mattress. A lump of solid pain lodges in Kurt’s throat. He knew it – he knew it was just a matter of time, but he thought it might take longer with Sebastian.

He fooled himself into believing there was a chance that Sebastian wouldn’t.

His body goes rigid and his heart starts to hurt, but Sebastian’s voice whispers in his ear,” Trust me.”

_Trust him._

If Kurt had a gold coin for every time he heard that…

When Kurt doesn’t move, Sebastian sighs and says, “Please? I promise, I’m not going to hurt you.”

Kurt complies, near tears as he rolls onto his stomach, a bit of his dream broken. He hears the sound of a cork pulled from a jar, and his nose fills with the strong scent of rose hips and honey. Kurt’s head turns in Sebastian’s direction, looking at a small clay pot in Sebastian’s hands.

“I got this for your mark,” Sebastian says, tilting the jar for Kurt to see the thick white ointment inside.

“Wh---what is it?” Kurt asks, inching away, sniffling and catching the sweet scent again.

“It’s a salve,” Sebastian explains, dipping his fingers into the ointment and bringing up a dollop. “Don’t be afraid. It shouldn’t sting.”

Sebastian’s fingers touch Kurt’s skin, the ointment sinking into his damaged flesh, and the skin of his shoulder tingles.

“Where did you get it?” Kurt asks, his muscles slackening, his head relaxing onto his folded arms.

“I traded downstairs for it,” Sebastian explains, pulling another dollop from the pot with his fingers, “from the master of the inn.” Sebastian’s green eyes follow his fingers as he traces over the cruel burn, the unnecessary desecration of this boy’s smooth skin. “I was lucky that he had it. There are no healers in this village I’ve been told. Not for miles.”

Kurt looks at the small pot with surprise. An ointment like that…Sebastian must have paid dearly for it.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Kurt says when he knows he should have just said _thank you_.

“Yes, I did,” Sebastian replies, his voice firmly squashing any argument. “I can’t have this getting infected. Then you would be nothing but a burden to me. Besides…maybe this will help it go away.” Sebastian blows a stream of cool air across the ointment-covered wound, and Kurt shivers. Sebastian rests his forehead against the back of Kurt’s head, indulging in inhaling the scent of his hair. “I know it must be difficult for you, but try to learn to accept kindness,” Sebastian whispers. He kisses the back of Kurt’s neck and pulls him close, rolling Kurt’s body gingerly and facing the boy toward him this time so that the wound gets the benefit of the air circulating around them to help it heal.

Sebastian draws the sheet over their bodies and closes his eyes, locking himself away in his own terrible mind and his own horrific nightmares - ones that this tortured young boy had been able to extinguish for a single blessed night. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe it wouldn’t happen again, and if that was the case, he was grateful for his night of rest. Sebastian always slept better with his husband, Aaron, in his arms, so he is relying on that. He feels his mind and his body float away. Another night over and another day beginning – that is all he has to look forward to. This wheel of day and night continues to roll on with him somewhere in the center of it, waiting for his time to be done.

He’s only in his thirties. He has way too much time to look forward to.

His mind drifts far from his present – from the room he’s lying in and the Godforsaken village he’s been wandering around for days - but before everything switches off to quiet and dark, he feels the slightest brush against his cheek – soft and light like the fluttering of a butterfly’s wing. He feels the bed dip and hears the sheets rustle, but when he opens his eyes there is nothing - just a still room and Kurt in his arms asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

The mellow and fuzzy, blurry around the edges feeling of waking up in a place of relative safety surrounds Kurt, bit by bit trying its best to stomp down his unease that he’s actually been lured by a charming stranger into a false sense of security. But since no one is bugging him to wake up, no one yelling at him or kicking him to start the day, he decides to take a little extra time and enjoy it. He doesn’t blink into the sunlight that paints a golden stripe across his face, relying on his body to become aware of his surroundings so that he can luxuriate in the pleasure of this unfamiliar situation that he’s in – this new way that he earns his keep.

Waking up in the arms of a handsome gentleman.

As he revives in pieces from his toes to his head, he registers something pushing against his belly.

Something _hard_.

A shy smile slips onto his sleepy face.

Before Sebastian, Kurt had never shared a bed with another man. During his training, it was forbidden, and as time went on, it was a policy he maintained. Being the regent’s favorite meant that he got to make that decision, and for that, he was more blessed than some. But he quite likes this, sleeping with Sebastian, and as for the unexpected hard-on resting against his stomach, Kurt knows it’s just a physical reaction. It happens to most men in the early hours of the morning. It has nothing to do with him.

Kurt was taught this.

He was also taught to repress it in his own body, trained at length to defy nature.

But nature is good. Nature feels right. Maybe he can re-teach his body to do the things it’s supposed to.

Maybe Sebastian can teach him.

Hiding behind closed lids and biting his lower lip, Kurt scoots closer to Sebastian, snuggling further into his arms, pressing his body against him. Sebastian mumbles into Kurt’s hair, then as Kurt wraps his arms around him tighter, Sebastian moans, rutting against him and placing kisses on the top of Kurt’s head.

“Mmm…” Sebastian murmurs, the sound rumbling deep in his chest. He mutters other incoherent words, and then a single name. “Aaron.”

 _Aaron_. _That must be the name of Sebastian’s husband,_ Kurt thinks. He frowns. Of course Sebastian would dream about his husband. Sebastian seems to really love him. Kurt has never known love like that. A man has never had reason to mumble Kurt’s name in his sleep, so Kurt shouldn’t expect it.

Yet still, it stings, but not for the ridiculous, immature, and selfish reason of Kurt thinking that after two days this man would be dreaming about _him_.

But because Sebastian will wake up to a used slave boy in his bed instead of the man of his dreams.

Kurt suddenly feels guilty for hugging Sebastian so tight.

He tries to pull away, but Sebastian’s arms wind around him, his lips lightly dusting Kurt’s forehead.

“Sebastian,” Kurt says, hoping to wake the man up before there can be any more misunderstandings between them. “Sebastian, wake up.”

“Nu-uh,” Sebastian refuses, his kisses moving down Kurt’s cheek in search of his neck.

“Sebastian, no,” Kurt tries again, but finds himself moving his head to give the man better access to his skin.

“Aaron?” Sebastian mutters, his mouth cocking in a slight grin. “Why are you…”

Sebastian opens his eyes, his words freezing in his mouth when he sees Kurt’s skin beneath his lips, the young boy’s blue eyes staring back at him.

“Oh…Kurt,” Sebastian says quietly, losing the smile on his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” Kurt braces for Sebastian to reject him, to push him away, but he doesn’t. He loosens his grip on Kurt’s body though, reaching a hand between them and shifting his hips to readjust himself.

“No, I’m sorry,” Kurt says. “You were…I mean, I felt…I…I didn’t mean to…”

Sebastian smiles at Kurt’s rambling, enjoying his adorably flustered reaction tainted slightly by how worried Kurt looks that Sebastian might lash out, maybe punish him.

Or leave him.

“Hey, it’s alright. Calm down,” Sebastian says, putting a hand to the back of Kurt’s head and lightly scratching his scalp. “No harm done.”

Kurt suspects that isn’t entirely true, not by the way Sebastian’s eyes shine with the dream of waking up with his husband in his arms, but Kurt’s not going to push him. He doesn’t want Sebastian to feel obligated to discuss things that might be too fresh, too uncomfortable to talk about, especially since discussing his husband will inevitably lead to talking about his son, and that could be a whole different rack causing Sebastian pain.

“Alright,” Kurt says. “Thank you.”

Sebastian nods in response, taking a moment to brush the hair out of Kurt’s face, tracing down his cheekbones with his thumbs, ending at his lips.

“I think we should get an early start,” Sebastian suggests, eyes still locked on Kurt’s face, not ready to relinquish his dream so quickly. “Get on the road before it gets too hot. We may have to camp out tonight. I hope that’s not a bother.”

“Not at all,” Kurt says, but that’s a partial untruth of his own. He’s had to spend many nights sleeping on the hard earth with nothing to shield him from the cold, nothing to keep the insects from crawling all over him, making a meal of him while he was too weak to swat them away. Thinking about it makes him shiver unconsciously. Sebastian feels it, and seems to know what it means.

“We’ll have the cart to bed down in,” Sebastian assures him, “and I have plenty of blankets to keep us from the cold. I promise, it won’t be bad.”

Kurt nods and smiles, though no assurance in the world can chase those memories away.

* * *

 

Before they get out of bed, Sebastian applies another layer of ointment to Kurt’s wound. Kurt isn’t convinced that it will do any good - that it will make the burn fade - but he wouldn’t trade this moment for anything. Sebastian’s fingertips on his skin, lightly tracing the mark, carefully applying a thin film of the cooling salve, are as close to friendship as he’s ever felt. He focuses on it, captures it, stores it in his brain with the other fragments of memory he feeds off of to keep himself going when times get tough.

They always do. He shouldn’t delude himself into thinking that will change.

Kurt and Sebastian dress for the day in light colored clothing to reflect the afternoon sun and allow the cool breeze – when there is one - to seep through. They discover quickly that Sebastian’s room is small for two men changing clothes. Kurt assumed Sebastian would go elsewhere to dress, the way he did to bathe, but he seems preoccupied and in a hurry. If, perhaps, there’s another reason he decides not to leave this time, he doesn’t voice it.

They both avoid looking at one another too much, but when Kurt bends at the waist to put on a pair of shoes Sebastian lent him, he catches a glimpse of Sebastian stripping off his pants. All Kurt manages is a peek of his leg from the middle of his thigh to his ankle, but it’s enough to make Kurt stop for a second and stare.

Kurt has seen his fair share of naked flesh in his life, but the men in his bed were recycled bodies, all pretty much alike – soft, pompous, arrogant, privileged members of the regent’s court who considered themselves too good for an honest day’s labor, unskilled to even tie their own shoes in some cases.

But not Sebastian.

Kurt knew from the cut of his arms and his chest that Sebastian was no stranger to hard work. He must also spend a good portion of his time atop his horse, Kurt concludes, because his leg is entirely muscle. Kurt hadn’t really taken notice when their bodies were pressed together in sleep – too tired and confused to worry about the specifics of Sebastian’s body. Before he can bend lower to get a better view, Sebastian tugs on his clean pants and stands to do up the front, shooting a knowing glance down at the eyes that he can feel on him, and Kurt, with reddening cheeks, looks away.

Kurt waits till Sebastian turns his back, then sneaks his purse containing his five gold coins out from under the mattress and shoves it in his pocket. Without letting on that he knows, Sebastian smiles, waiting till he hears the jingling of coins die down before he turns back around.

They eat while they pack - a breakfast of hot porridge, again with brown sugar and butter on top, and another tall mug of milk. Kurt smiles with every sip, remembering Sebastian’s speech from the night before. He imagines Sebastian at a dinner table, not as rough-hewn as this small, round table, with his husband and son, giving his boy the same lecture – calling him thin and pushing a mug of milk on him along with an extra serving of dinner. It makes Kurt grin wider to picture them that way, but it wavers when he remembers that Sebastian is alone in the world now. He has no family to return to. At least Kurt has his father, if they ever find him. But regardless, Kurt knows he’s out there somewhere, missing Kurt, wondering about him, waiting for him to find a way home.

Sebastian makes Kurt eat every last bite of his breakfast, sitting him down and watching him with hawk eyes till he finishes. After the meal is done and the bags and trunk packed, they start loading everything up into Sebastian’s cart. When Sebastian had mentioned his cart, it immediately brought to Kurt’s mind the cramped wooden wagon on two crooked wheels that Kurt had been bound, blindfolded, and thrown into before he was left on the side of the road. But this cart of Sebastian’s is actually a buckboard - large, rectangular in shape, with more than enough room for supplies, and later, for the two of them to lie comfortably in. Sebastian teaches Kurt how to prepare his horse for the journey, how to brush him down, how to make sure his shoes are set right and clean, and his hooves sound. Finally, Sebastian shows Kurt how to attach the horse to the rig.

Kurt didn’t have to work in the stables at the regent’s house, even when he was punished. It was considered a disgrace far below his station. Besides, the punishments Kurt suffered were tailor made for him, and therefore exceptionally cruel in nature. But being around the animals in the stable and the yard fills him with calm, makes him feel safe.

It reminds him of home.

He’s almost disappointed when Sebastian says they have to leave.

“Here you go, lovelies.” The kindly woman from the inn catches them before they climb into Sebastian’s cart, bustling out to the buckboard with her arms full. “I packed you up a little something for your trip.” Kurt stares with open-mouthed disbelief at what she calls _a little something_. She hands Kurt a bulging basket, and to Sebastian, an equally bulging sack. Kurt doesn’t have to open the basket to tell it’s crammed with food. She sets it into his arms and he nearly drops to the ground with its weight. She chuckles, watching him with crinkled eyes and a motherly smile as he teeters, struggling to find his feet again. Once he steadies himself, he feels the warmth of freshly baked food bleeding through the basket weave. He takes a deep breath and inhales dozens of delicious smells. Kurt can’t imagine that she does this for all her boarders. This basket carries in it a kindness that goes far beyond the food within.

“Thank you, Carole,” Sebastian says, putting the sack (which Kurt can tell has more food in it by the impressions the jars and cans make leaning into the thick material) into the cart and returning to give the woman a hug. “Thank you for all your hospitality.”

“It’s the least I can do,” she says, patting Sebastian on the back and hugging him tight. “And you take care of this one…” She breaks from Sebastian’s embrace and heads for Kurt, engulfing him in her arms before he has a chance to protest – not that he would. She’s one of the few people he has met who have looked at him from the start like he has value, though why, he doesn’t understand. She must know what he is by now, even if Sebastian didn’t tell her. Apparently, his situation is more obvious than he first thought, and that knowledge in retrospect - reflecting back on the places he has already been and the people who extended him kindness - makes him overwhelmingly self-conscious.

“That I will,” Sebastian says. They don’t sound like empty words to Kurt’s ears, and he prays that Sebastian means them, that he isn’t posturing to put this poor woman’s mind at ease. But Kurt can’t mistake her generosity and compassion for naïvete. Carole rules the roost here, and Kurt feels certain that if she thought Sebastian meant to abuse him, she would find a way to make Kurt stay, maybe have her two brute employees send Sebastian on his way without him. In her every glance, she seems confident that Sebastian means to take care of him, and that’s a good enough recommendation for Kurt.

Kurt and Sebastian climb into the buckboard and Sebastian takes the reins. He clicks his tongue and that’s all he needs to do to get the horse moving. The stallion takes a few steps at an easy pace and the buckboard lurches forward to follow. Sebastian grabs a wide brim straw hat and puts it on his head, shading his eyes from the sun that’s been climbing steadily during the long morning, but seems to be speeding its ascent. Kurt looks around him at the village they’re passing through – the shops and stalls he hadn’t had a chance to see in the short time he’d been there, the people bustling about their daily routines, minding their own business. Sitting in Sebastian’s buckboard, wearing what he’s come to assume are his son’s old clothes, Kurt blends in. Off the road and out of his rags, he’s become anonymous.

Kurt stares at Sebastian, the man’s green eyes fixed on the road ahead, but a few seconds in, they dart Kurt’s way.

“Somethin’ on your mind?” he asks, clicking his tongue again to get his horse to speed up.

“Do you know her well? That woman from the inn?” Kurt asks, glancing back over his shoulder to give Carole another wave, Sebastian’s eyes following him, watching how Kurt smiles for the older woman.

“You can say that,” Sebastian says. “I stay here quite a bit. It’s mid-way between where I’m coming from and where I’m going. We’ve gotten to talking. We have a few things in common.”

Kurt gazes off into the distance, at the long stretch of dirt road he’d be walking if Sebastian hadn’t found him – the one he’d still be walking, if he didn’t drop dead first.

“Does she have any children?” Kurt asks, wanting his question to sound idle, with no suspicions attached, but Sebastian is a smart man.

“She had a son,” Sebastian says. “Around your age when they took him.”

Kurt nods, holding back a gasp. He doesn’t want to sound surprised. The regent’s men break up families all the time, but it amazes Kurt how far his arm reaches.

“Do you think…” Kurt starts, knowing it’s better not to hope, but Carole is such a sweet woman. She deserves happiness.

Sebastian puts a hand on Kurt’s knee.

“They sent him off to war,” Sebastian says solemnly. “He came home in a box.”

This time Kurt does gasp, swallowing a multitude of tears, and he wishes he had thought to hug Carole a little longer. His hands creep up his arms, wrapping around his waist, looking for a way to give himself comfort.

“We’re all connected out here,” Sebastian says, squeezing Kurt’s knee before moving his hand away. “All bound by a similar pain, so in a way, we’re all friends, even with the people we haven’t met. And now you, little one, are one of us.”

Kurt smiles, but it’s hard to feel comforted by his inclusion in this group. It’s a membership he’s been forced into. Sebastian notices that. He notices the smile Kurt had for Carole disappear from his face, the cheery youth bleeding from his eyes.

“So, give me some idea where it is we’re headed,” he says in an effort to take Kurt’s mind off Carole, her son, and everything they’re leaving to the past.

Kurt’s eyes snap up so quickly, Sebastian swear he hears them move.

“You mean, _I’m_ going to be leading us?” Kurt goes nearly white and Sebastian laughs.

“Yup,” Sebastian teases; the squeak Kurt lets out is completely worth it.

“But…but I…”

“Relax, kid. You’re not leading us entirely,” Sebastian says, letting Kurt off the hook. Kurt’s jaw tightens, but to keep from smiling. Sebastian spots the corners of Kurt’s mouth trying to lift, wishing he had coaxed that smile into blossoming. “I have business I have to do, and you’re kind of along for the ride, but I need to have some idea whereabouts we’re going to find your dad.”

“I don’t remember much,” Kurt says apologetically.

“I know,” Sebastian answers, his voice soft. “Just, maybe, close your eyes and try to picture what home looked like, as much as you can, then tell me what you see. Any detail will help, no matter how small.”

Kurt nods and does what Sebastian says. He closes his eyes and drudges up pictures home, his mom and dad, and what life was like before the regent’s house.

“We lived on a farm,” he starts, relaying the information that he’s without-a-doubt certain of, the stuff he repeated to himself when the masters tried to brainwash him, so that no matter what, he wouldn’t forget – hoping that someday he might make it home. “It was near a pond, but it was barely that – more like a hole in the ground filled in with water when it rained, though somehow it had a few fish in it.”

“Big farm or small?”

“Small,” Kurt answers quickly. “We only had the two fields, and we grew wheat mostly, like everyone else. Peanuts, sometimes.”

Sebastian takes the information in and sets it to memory, using it to picture the farm for himself, imagining Kurt – a younger, innocent and carefree Kurt – running through the fields, playing, swimming in that pond.

“What else did your folks raise on the farm?”

Kurt squeezes his eyes tighter, shutting out every inch of sunlight, his memories becoming clearer in the sepia-tinted dark.

“Cows, chickens, sheep,” Kurt ticks off. “We had a horse.”

“You guys had livestock?” Sebastian asks, sounding shocked. “Livestock _and_ crops? How could you possibly do both?”

“How is that odd?” Kurt asks. “You’re a rancher.”

“Yeah, but I primarily keep a horse and move herds,” Sebastian says, steering the horse off to a left fork in the road. “Grazing animals - that’s another matter. Most land around here is bone dry. Heck, I’m amazed anyone can survive out here.”

“I wasn’t from around here,” Kurt says, his voice sounding small. “When the regent’s men took me from my parents, it took five days to get to the regent’s house, traveling night and day without stopping.”

“Five days,” Sebastian repeats, chewing on the words as if that timeframe has meaning to him. “Five days.”

“Does that…is that _familiar_ to you?” Kurt asks, watching Sebastian’s eyes wander left and right, looking more at his thoughts than the land ahead.

“I don’t know,” Sebastian says. “It might.” He drops it, eyes still moving over the landscape but his thoughts somewhere else, somewhere long gone. Sebastian’s answer makes no sense to Kurt. How can Sebastian not know? How does he not know his own mind? But Kurt doesn’t let it bother him. Sebastian is helping him. Kurt doesn’t need to hound the man for details of what he does and does not know.

Traveling by buckboard is more comfortable than riding in the wooden cart…though not by much. After hours sitting upright on the hard wooden bench, Kurt’s back begins to ache, his legs start to feel stiff, and his rear end has fallen asleep. Still, Kurt is thankful that this time he has his hands and legs free. They don’t stop for rests and Kurt doesn’t ask to. They eat their lunch as they ride, breaking into the basket and supping on pulled meat sandwiches, washing them down with water from a canteen. They speak very little. Kurt can tell that Sebastian is preoccupied, so he enjoys the quiet and leaves Sebastian to his thoughts.

Kurt watches the world move alongside them. Admittedly, there isn’t much to see – no trees, no grass, no animals, very few birds. There’s dirt to all sides of them and more of it ahead. The view changes only slightly as the sun continues to rise, growing hotter by the hour, juggling the mirages around. As they trundle along, the horse kicks up loose dust, burning Kurt’s eyes. They water and tear, dripping muddy trails down his cheeks. Watching Kurt struggle with his sight, Sebastian puts his hat on Kurt’s head, which does help, but more and more Kurt closes his eyes to block out the glare.

The next time Kurt opens them, the sun has moved from his sight, and the sky has changed vistas from blue to golden. Kurt’s body has gone from stiff to sore, and he’s laying horizontal across the buckboard bench, curled in a partial fetal position…with his head in Sebastian’s lap. He unwinds his limbs, but his muscles scream to be left alone, his left leg threatening to cramp if he tries to sit up.

“There you are, sleeping beauty,” Sebastian says with a chuckle, taking both reins in his left hand and using his right to help Kurt back up in his seat.

“Did I…fall asleep?” Kurt asks. Sebastian rolls his eyes with Kurt slowly realizing how ridiculous a thing it was to ask.

“Yeah,” Sebastian says. “You’ve been out for a couple of hours. I even stopped to water my horse. You almost fell out, that’s when I laid you down.”

“I’m sorry,” Kurt says. “I didn’t…I don’t mean to be rude.”

“It’s alright,” Sebastian says, reaching out to give Kurt’s shoulder a squeeze. “I didn’t think you’d be completely up to par anyhow. But we’re going to be stopping for the night soon, just over the next ridge.”

Kurt moves his eyes to the horizon to look for the next ridge, but all he sees is dirt. If there’s any distinction, any contour to the land, Kurt doesn’t see it, and like with many things lately, he’ll have to take Sebastian at his word.

Sunset simmers just a hair above the horizon when they finally reach Sebastian’s chosen camping spot.

“There’s no watering hole around here,” Sebastian says as he sets the brakes on his buckboard. “But we’ll be at one tomorrow.”

“That’s alright,” Kurt says, rubbing his dry eyes with his fingertips. “I don’t think I could stand to take a bath anyway. My muscles don’t want to move.” He yawns. “Who knew that sitting all day could be so tiring?”

Through the slits in his eyelids, Kurt sees a comment leap to Sebastian’s mind, possibly something along the lines of the one he made when they first met – about Kurt being good for nothing but sitting on silk pillows. Whatever the comment, Sebastian bites his lip and says nothing.

“Are you certain you don’t want to clean up a little?” he asks instead.

Kurt shakes his head. “I’m good.”

Sebastian looks into Kurt’s weary face, eyes that have squinted all day beneath the sun softening with the fading light. He raises a finger and runs it down Kurt’s cheek, making a clean streak down his dirty skin and then showing Kurt the evidence on his fingertip. Kurt’s sleepy eyes pop open. He screws up his face and Sebastian chuckles. “You can take a cloth and one of the canteens and clean up. Wipe off the dust and the sweat and get yourself something clean to wear. I’m going to take care of the horse.”

“Do you need any help?” Kurt asks, watching Sebastian leap down from the buckboard and head for the animal.

“Nah,” Sebastian says with a wave. “Thing’s worn out and you’re still kind of new. Best if I do this myself.”

Kurt nods, climbing into the back of the buckboard and rummaging through the trunk of clothes to find a washing cloth while Sebastian tends to his horse. Kurt hears music – a whispered singing – and he stops to watch. There’s a process to everything Sebastian does, a method, and it’s almost relaxing to watch him work. He unhitches the horse from the cart, but he doesn’t tie him to a nearby rock. Kurt has never known anyone to have that much trust in an animal. How does Sebastian know the beast isn’t going to run off? That quality, that level of loyalty, is not something that can be trained. Sebastian runs a hand down the horse’s nose and talks to him quietly. As long as Sebastian keeps talking, the horse doesn’t move, content to stay with his master.

Kurt can understand that. Had he been treated nicer, had he been shown any love or affection, he might have been content to stay at the regent’s house.

But kindness itself can be a trap. He’d seen another young slave become attached to a visitor at court. The man stayed the weekend with the slave – a boy younger and less experienced than Kurt. The visitor lavished attention on the slave, gave him gifts, dressed him in fine clothes. He did not allow anyone to raise a hand to the slave, and the boy, so starved for attention, fell hopelessly in love. Kurt thought that promises may have been made between them, and he became seeded with jealousy, thinking that this boy might actually get Kurt’s wish – that he might leave the regent’s house a free man. But at weekend’s end, the stranger left without the boy, and it broke the boy’s heart. When Kurt looked upon him from that day forth, he seemed empty, hollow. He didn’t smile, he didn’t laugh. He cared nothing for food or drink. Kurt remembered thinking what a ridiculous folly it all was, being heartbroken over a man like that, knowing what his station was, that slaves were meant to be used, not loved.

Now Kurt understands why the boy behaved that way. He sees the proof of it with his own eyes as the horse nuzzles into Sebastian’s neck and then stays where Sebastian leaves him, unmoving, secured solely by his devotion.

That horse loves Sebastian, and Sebastian loves his horse. Sebastian feeds him and cares for him, like any master would, but he also sings to him, whispers to him, putting a blanket over his back and doing the equivalent of tucking him in for the night. This tenderness puts into bas-relief how lonely and lacking the years of Kurt’s life have been.

All the time Kurt spent in the regent’s house, he mattered less than a horse.

* * *

 

The night is comfortable and without any breeze, but Sebastian builds a fire anyway, to ward wild animals away. The silence from the trail continues around the campfire but it’s a mutually agreed upon silence – with Sebastian pondering their route and their destination (Kurt assumes) and Kurt trying hard not to think about what the future might hold for him. He’s gotten farther in his quest than he ever thought possible, but in many ways he feels even more lost, adrift, with no view of what lies ahead or behind. Sebastian must have ridden these roads a hundred times if he can find his way in these barren lands without a map or a compass, and that is both impressive and saddening.

It puts into Kurt’s mind the image of a man wandering aimlessly since his anchor in life has gone.

They work their way through a pair of meat pies and half a loaf of crusty bread. Even with his nap on the trail, Kurt yawns behind his hand after every bite. Chewing becomes difficult, his jaw heavier and heavier. He rests his eyes and his head follows, tilting to the right and relaxing against his shoulder, the cracking and snapping of the fire lulling him back to sleep.

“Come along, little one,” he hears through the song of the firelight, “before you plant yourself in the dirt.” Kurt murmurs something in acknowledgment, and it earns him a laugh. The sound of that laughter is sweet, and Kurt is tempted to repeat what he said, _if_ he can, so he can hear it again. He’s lifted into the air and he feels like he’s floating, his skin cooling as he travels away from the fire. It’s almost the same feeling as bobbing on water, weightless, careless, helpless, letting the world propel him left and right with no say as to where he might travel or where he’ll end up.

That’s been the way of things for most of his life, and it’s made him feel trapped.

But at this moment, that same sensation makes him feel free.

He’s lowered onto a blanket – a bed of blankets really – and he starts to drift to off, figuring Sebastian will return to the fire and leave him to sleep. But the buckboard shifts and Kurt feels a body lie on the blankets beside him, pulling another blanket up over them.

“Mmm, Sebastian?” Kurt mumbles.

“You have a good idea here,” Sebastian says, for some reason needing to explain. “I’m pretty worn out myself, and we’ll be starting early again tomorrow.”

“…the fire…” Kurt says other words around those two, but even he can’t make them out.

“It’ll burn itself down,” Sebastian says. “Nothing out here but dirt and more dirt anyhow, and there’s no wind strong enough to carry the embers this far.”

Sebastian wraps his arms around Kurt and holds him close, and where this should help Kurt go straight to sleep, it seems to wake him up inside. Feeling Sebastian’s body beside his reminds Kurt of the morning, when Kurt woke with Sebastian hard against him, and how Sebastian had mistaken Kurt for his husband – for Aaron.

But the feelings that mistake stirred up inside Kurt haunt him. Sebastian loves another man, loves him deeply, loves him with everything, even though he’s gone.

And Kurt got to feel that love for a blessed moment.

He wants more of it, even if it doesn’t belong to him.

But that’s cruel. He shouldn’t want it, and he shouldn’t take things that don’t belong to him.

In the regent’s house, stealing was a crime punishable by whipping. Kurt had never stolen anything. But maybe he could take something for himself – a _little_ something – and make that something belong to him.

Kurt opens his eyes in degrees, not wanting to let on that he’s awake, especially when he feels the even puff of Sebastian’s breathing against his forehead. He inches up carefully, trying not to shake the buckboard, moving four inches over the space of ten minutes, if not more. He’s almost at a point where he can brush a light kiss against Sebastian’s cheek, when suddenly the man speaks.

“If you’re going to steal kisses,” Sebastian says, “can you do it while my eyes are open? I have enough ghosts following me. If you do it on the sly, I’ll think I’m going crazy.” Sebastian laughs, and for the first time that day he sounds truly exhausted. “Not that I’m not, but…” Sebastian shakes his head with that tired laugh in his throat and eyes squeezed shut. His laughter dies down and Kurt stares at him with wider blue eyes and redder cheeks. Sebastian opens his eyes and looks at the boy lying in front of him, raising a brow, but whether it’s a question or a challenge, Kurt doesn’t know. The expression on Sebastian’s face – well, it’s difficult for Kurt to tell. Kurt has spent a great deal of time around men and women who rarely say what they mean, but from what he knows of Sebastian, he’s a straightforward, honorable man. He’s not trying to trick Kurt. He’s giving him a choice.

Kurt leans in, assessing every inch of the man’s expression, watching Sebastian watch him as he moves forward to kiss his cheek. But somewhere along the way, Kurt gets lost in the eyes staring at him, or he simply miscalculates, and he presses his lips gently against Sebastian’s mouth.

The kiss is quick, unexpected, and Sebastian gasps, which makes Kurt jerk backward.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” Kurt stammers. “I meant to…”

“It’s fine,” Sebastian says. “Let’s…let’s get some sleep.” And without any further comment on the subject, Sebastian returns the kiss – a similar gentle press of lips on lips, as if it was the most casually acceptable thing in the world - then closes his eyes and falls off to sleep.

For Sebastian, sleep seems to come like the flicking of a switch, but for the pounding of his heart inside his ears, sleep takes longer to come to Kurt.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gives a bit more background as to what happened to Kurt when he was taken from his parents. Warning for angst, anxiety, violence, kidnapping, blink-and-you'll-miss it sexual assault, nightmares, and talk about Kurt's mother's death.

_“Kurt! Kurt! Can you please come to the house? You’ve been lazing about long enough. It’s time to get to work!”_

_Kurt opens his eyelids a slit and looks up at the sky, noting the position of the sun above his head, hovering off to the east._

_“Right now?” he calls, his voice thick like molasses, dripping from his groggy lips. He usually wouldn’t question his mother, but he doesn’t understand her demand for his return. By his reckoning, he’s only been out for a few minutes shy of half-an-hour. His mother’s dyes, simmering at a low boil in her cast-iron cauldron over the large outdoor fire pit, shouldn’t be ready yet. They’re working with violet today – a special order for the regent’s house - and a shade that deep takes over an hour to steep. Kurt had woken up early and gathered more than enough wood to keep the fire stoked, so there’s no way she could possibly need more. Besides, the linens Kurt is responsible for salting haven’t soaked long enough to take the dyes even if they **were** ready. He has no other chores until after lunch, so what could his mother need him for?_

_“Yes, my darling,” she yells snappishly. “I need you back at the house **right** **now**.”_

_“Yes, mother,” he replies, hiding his disappointment behind a yawn. He’d only just drifted off, and he was having the most amazing dream about traveling the world, exploring from shore to shore of their country on horseback, camping out under the stars, even riding boats to other lands. The warm breeze ruffles his hair and immediately brings back an image of the welcoming darkness – a clear night sky filled with silver points of light, and him bobbing along in a sailboat, surrendering to the whim of the wind and the water, letting them navigate his course for him. He sighs, tempted to return to it, but he won’t disobey his mother. She isn’t a frivolous woman. She must have her reasons for calling him home. “I’m coming.”_

_“And d-don’t forget that bucket of raspberries I sent you out to pick, or I’ll…or I’ll tan your hide!”_

_Kurt’s eyes pop open wide, every inch of cozy sleep-drunkenness erasing from his body, replaced by a cold fever at the sound of his mother threatening to spank him. His mother has never threatened him, never laid a hand on him. Violence is not a part of her nature. Even if it was, Kurt tries to never give her a reason to be angry. Kurt and his mother are almost kindred spirits – closer in heart and mind than most mothers and sons. Kurt’s mother and his father have argued on more than one occasion the merits of spanking. His father claims Kurt will become spoiled and unruly without a hiding from time to time, but his mother is ardently against it, and when it comes to Kurt, his mother always wins._

_Kurt knows his father isn’t thrilled by that, but he stopped arguing the point long ago. He must trust his wife’s judgment in the raising of their only child as he mostly leaves her to it._

_And raspberries…they haven’t had raspberries on the place since a herd of the regent’s deer ate all the bushes years ago. Why would his mother think she sent him out for raspberries? But more unnerving is the unease in her voice, obvious to detect since Kurt has never heard it before. It could be that she and his father are fighting, which has been happening with growing frequency. Kurt doesn’t know exactly why the fighting started, or what it’s over, but it usually stops when he enters the room, followed by inscrutable glances thrown his way._

_Kurt **does** have a theory. He guesses it’s because he’s turned old enough to be apprenticed. Apprentice to a trade is what his father wants for him. His mother, however, would prefer him educated - sent to a fine school in the city and come out in society as an accomplished young man. She has raised him that way – with a respect for hard work and an appreciation for the life it provides them, but also with a certain air of refinement that comes with learning the “delicate” arts: reading, writing, sewing, painting, music._

_Frippery his father believes more suitable for women, and overall a waste of a man’s time._

_Kurt likes his mother’s vision for his future better, but he fears she might lose this battle, seeing how poor they’ve become, the debts they owe piling up faster than they can pay them._

_Even young as he is, Kurt understands their money woes. He knows who the tax collectors are when they show up at the garden gate. One of his mother’s best milking cows went with them the last time they showed up. He’s afraid to know what they’ll take next time they come._

_Maybe his mother and father are fighting, and that’s why she wants Kurt back at the house. She knows when he shows up, the fighting will stop._

_Kurt stands quickly and brushes the grass off his seat, trying to remember where he left his bucket. If he finds it, he can gather a few handfuls of blueberries or blackberries along the way. Strawberries are his mother’s favorites, but they don’t come up the way they used to. If he can’t find the bucket, he can carry them back in his shirt. Then at least she’ll have something to…_

_A loud clatter echoes across the meadow, dull and splintered, like the sound of a chair hitting a wall and breaking. He hears muffled voices – one definitely his mother, and then his father saying, “He’s coming, alright? You don’t have to do that. He’s coming.”_

_Kurt stops in his tracks and listens, waiting for another noise or another voice. Any sound. Everything seems to have stopped with him – the birds and the bugs wait in the flowers and the trees, the sheep grazing have stopped their chewing, even the wind holds its breath. Fear grips Kurt’s chest and holds on with nails bared. Did his mother hit his father with a chair? Did his father raise a fist to his mother? Kurt has known his father to be a strict man, but not an abusive one. His mother and father love each other, adore each other. He would never hit her._

_But then…_

_“Where the hell is that boy?” he hears a strange man’s voice growl, and those nails wrapped around Kurt’s chest dig in. He’s petrified. He doesn’t want to take a step closer. He doesn’t want to go anywhere near his house. He can feel danger in the air, hitting him, prickling his skin. If he turns and runs in the opposite direction, how far can he get? To the next farm for help? To town?_

_Running to town at full tilt will still take an hour. Can he risk leaving his mother in danger for that long?_

_He hears a thump - the sound of something soft being hit - and then his mother scream in pain._

_“Run, Kurt!” she wails as another punch lands. “Run now!”_

_(Later, when he’s tied up in a wooden cart on his way to the regent’s house, he’ll realize that his mother was commanding him to run away, that every word she had said was a signal – a clue that he was in danger - hoping he would be able to figure it out._

_His mother hadn’t been calling him for help._

_She knew there was nothing anyone could do to save her.)_

_“Mom!” Kurt screams, racing for the house. “Mom! No!” Kurt’s bare feet pound the earth, but the ground is slick from an evening rain, and with every step he takes, his right foot slides. His toe catches in a gopher hole and his ankle twists, a sharp pain shooting up his leg to his knee, but he doesn’t stop. He hears another punch, then another, then a tortured groan he knows came from his dad._

_“Dad! Dad!”_

_Kurt leaps the wooden fence into the garden. A pair of rough hands grab him before he hits the ground. Kurt flails in all directions, fighting blindly the man who has his arms wrapped around him from behind, struggling to wriggle free. His captor lifts Kurt up over his head and drops him on his tailbone, startling him with the pain. Then the man pounces, pinning Kurt on his back, holding his wrists down in the dirt above his head._

_“No!” Kurt screams, kicking out with his legs, biting at the hand that tries to cover his mouth. “Get off of me! Get…off…of me! Mom! Dad! Mom!”_

_His right foot – the one he twisted when he tripped – connects with something soft, and he hears a man curse at him through a groan._

_“Bloody damned little fuckin’ motherfucker…”_

_The man pinning Kurt’s arms laughs._

_“Kid gotcha there,” he says to the injured man out of Kurt’s line of sight. “Good thing you ain’t married.”_

_“Yeah, well,” the strained voice mutters, and then a heavy fist sinks into Kurt’s stomach. Suddenly, Kurt can’t breathe. He gasps for breath, curling in on himself to minimize the pain, but the fight in him is gone. “I’d getcha tit for tat, kid,” the man grumbles bitterly, “but the regent wants this.” The man grabs Kurt between the legs - not hard enough to hurt, but it stuns Kurt into absolute terrified silence. “Ha! That shut him up, didn’ it?”_

_Kurt squeezes his eyes tight as a wave of humiliation hits him._

_No one has ever touched him like that before._

_But from the sounds of it, it was going to happen again._

_The thought of that turns him to stone. Even his wrists and his ankles being tied doesn’t snap him out of it. These men kidnapping him were going to sell him to the sex trade. That’s the only explanation. But why? Why him? He was only eight._

_Then another word spoken, one shuffled out of his head when the man put his grubby hand on Kurt’s crotch, strikes back at him like the clapper on a bell._

_Regent. These men aren’t selling him into **any** sex trade. They’re selling him to the **regent**. _

_Kurt’s heard stories about the regent’s house – how kids went there and were never heard from again. How children were beaten skinless if they didn’t behave, and had their parts cut off and fed to the dogs for trying to run away._

_If Kurt was being taken to the regent, he would never see his mother or father alive again._

_When he opens his eyes, he sees only the darkness behind a heavy strip of fabric fitted over his eyes and tied at the back of his head. The knot catches in his hair, pulling out strands as he tosses his head left and right, trying to dislodge it so he can see._

_“Settle down, ya lanky bastard,” the man he kicked says, swatting Kurt hard on the behind, his tailbone stinging from the painful drop earlier._

_Kurt feels his body lifted by the shoulders and the knees, and the severity of his situation crashes in on him - the reality that if these men succeed in taking him from his home, he’ll disappear - but before he can make a last-ditch attempt at an escape, he’s thrown onto something hard. He feels it roll slightly, hears the neigh of an impatient horse, and he knows what he’s on. He’s in a cart pulled by a horse._

_He’s being stolen away, and no one is coming to his rescue._

_“No!” he screams, thrashing back and forth, fighting with the ties at his wrists and ankles, trying to work himself loose. “No! Mom! Dad! Please! Don’t let them take me!”_

_“Ugh. Gag him, Reginald. I can’t listen to that brat scream the whole trip back.”_

_Kurt can’t get the binds undone – the knots far too well tied – but he manages to creep up onto his knees, leaning against the side to yell over the edge._

_“Mom! Dad! Help me! Hel---oof!”_

_The same fist that planted into his gut wallops him across the chin, and he swears he feels his brain swim around. He tastes blood in his mouth; part of his lower lip aches, then tingles and goes numb._

_“Shut it!” the man hisses, squeezing Kurt’s cheeks hard with unforgiving fingers. Kurt squeals, and the man shoves a rough piece of fabric between Kurt’s lips and teeth, tying this tight, too – so tight that Kurt can’t close his mouth around it._

_“What about th’ parents?” the man who had held Kurt down asks as his partner – Reginald, apparently - climbs into the cart._

_“I already knifed the woman,” he answers, his tone all business, saying the words easy like letting someone know that’s it’s about to rain. “Prob’ly dead a’ready. And the dad’s leg is broke. He won’t be followin’ anytime soon.”_

_The reins snap, and the horse whinnies in objection. Its hooves trample the wet earth and the cart pulls forward, stuttering at the start, banging Kurt’s head into the side._

_Kurt repeats the man’s words in his head, fragments knocking around his skull along with his rattled brain._

_‘Knifed the woman…dead already…dad’s leg broke…won’t be following…’_

_His mother was dead. The man beat her up and stabbed her. Now, she’s dead. And his father injured – alive, but injured…as far as Kurt knows. They live in a remote area. They don’t get a lot of visitors. If his father can’t make it to help, or if no one stops by to check on him, he could die from his injuries, or starve within weeks._

_But Kurt has to hold on to the hope that he’ll be alright, because it’s all Kurt has._

_Kurt didn’t get to see either of them, didn’t get to tell them he loved them, didn’t get to say good-bye._

_Where his mother is concerned, he won’t ever get the chance._

_“No,” he mumbles with tears rolling anew down his face, soaking the fabric in his mouth until he can taste the salt of them on his tongue. “No! Dad! Mom! Dad! Help me! Somebody help me!”_

_He’s not yelling loudly, and his jabbering makes no sense. No one outside the cart will hear, but the man with the reins turns and swipes him across the face with a crop all the same._

_“Stop it!” the other man hisses. “You mark him up and the regent will have both our skins.”_

_“Ah, he’ll heal up ‘efore we get there, won’t ya?” The man spits in Kurt’s face, the rank stream of saliva stinging the new cut on his cheek, and Kurt lays still, crying in quiet._

_“See?” the wickeder of the men says to his companion. “He’s learning to be a good boy a’ready. He’ll be primed and ready for the regent once we reach ‘is house.” He chuckles. “I imagine that will earn us twice our fee – doing all the hard work for ‘im.”_

_Then the man whips the horse a little harder in a symbolic gesture, throwing his head back and laughing when the horse kicks back uselessly with its hind legs, but he’s the only one who laughs. Kidnapping kids and killing women doesn’t sit right with the other man. He may be a cutthroat, but by need and not want. He tries to live by a code, and **this** he didn’t sign up for. But he’s in it up to his neck, and he knows it. There’s too much on the line for him to risk for the sake of one kid, especially when he has a kid of his own._

_So he doesn’t join in the man’s laughter. He sits quiet and stares at the horse, stares at the road, at anything that might take his mind off of everything they’d done._

_There’s no laughter in him._

_Not that Kurt would have heard, because inside his mind, he’s screaming._

_***_

“No! Don’t let them take me! Mom! Dad! No!”

After their long day of travel - of sitting beneath the burning sun, negotiating the trail almost blind with sunlight shining its worst in his eyes when he gave up his hat to Kurt - Sebastian is dead to the world. But in his arms, he feels Kurt struggle. Secure in the stone fortress of his mind, constructed to keep the world out, Kurt’s whimpering finds a way through, and he wakes when tears that are not his own run down his neck.

“Kurt?” Sebastian mutters, the words landing in Kurt’s hair brushing against Sebastian’s chin. “Kurt? What’s wrong?”

“Please,” Kurt pleads, his legs and arms moving weakly in unison, as if they were bound. “Please, let me go…”

“Kurt,” Sebastian says, cursing his locked-in brain and exhausted body for rousing too slowly.

“Don’t take me away!” Kurt sobs, the sound catching in his throat like they’re trying to choke him from the inside. “I want to stay with my mom and dad! Don’t…don’t take me…please…”

Sebastian couldn’t have opened his eyes wider if he wanted. He lets Kurt go so the boy won’t feel confined, then pulls the blankets off him in hopes that the cold air might shock him awake, but neither does the trick. He’s trapped in this nightmare, with no way out.

Sebastian knows how that feels.

That’s why Sebastian offered to take Kurt with him, in part to keep his own nightmares away.

“Kurt, I need you to wake up,” Sebastian says. Kurt’s face is a mess of hot tears and puffy cheeks, his nose running down over his upper lip. Sebastian kisses Kurt’s forehead, talking to him calmly. “Wake up, Kurt. Open your eyes and look at me.”

Kurt’s eyelids flutter open. He stares at Sebastian, but his blue eyes have turned black, fearful but devoid of consciousness, and Sebastian knows that Kurt doesn’t see him.

“Don’t let them take me away,” Kurt begs, his voice losing its steam.

“I won’t let them take you, darling,” Sebastian promises. “I won’t.” Kurt’s cries rip through Sebastian’s body like shears, tearing his seams apart, the carefully mended wounds he shows to no one popping stitch by stitch as he tries to soothe Kurt’s despair. “They’ll never take you again. Now wake up. Please, Kurt. I need you to wake up.”

“Don’t…” Kurt whines, sounding lost, sounding young – so much younger than the boy he is. “Don’t take me away. P-please…p-please…” His whines turn into defeat, and Kurt finally breaks down, going slack, going quiet.

“I won’t let anyone take you,” Sebastian says, rocking Kurt in his arms and hushing him back to sleep, feeling like he’s signed some kind of warrant with those words, using his life as collateral. “I’ll protect you. I won’t let anyone hurt you again. Not the regent, not his men, not the bounty hunters…no one, Kurt. No one.”

He’d made that same promise to someone else once, and he failed in his attempt to keep it – failed horribly. He’ll be damned if he breaks that same promise a second time. This isn’t just about keeping the damaged boy in his arms safe from harm. It’s his chance to redeem himself.

But at the same time, whether he entirely realizes it or not, Sebastian has put himself in a prime position to hurt Kurt someday.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for anxiety, some talk about religion (non-descript), a little more background information on Kurt's life as a slave (general, no all too specific), and Sebastian grieving his husband. Mention of masturbation.

Kurt wakes with his forehead resting against the strong line of Sebastian’s chest, Sebastian’s arms wrapped around him, the blanket tucked tight around both of them, and Sebastian’s fingers running up and down his spine. Kurt feels drained, as if he had run the length of the trail from the village to their campsite instead of riding it on Sebastian’s buckboard, but he knows his exhaustion has nothing to do with traveling.

Kurt doesn’t remember the specific details of his nightmare. When he’s caught in the middle of it, everything seems so clear - every sound, every smell, every hurt imprinted in his skull - but the further he wakes, slivers and cracks form in the memory until everything disappears.

Except the feel. His body remembers the _feel –_ the pain, the anxiety, the sorrow, the helplessness. It’s an experience he can’t put into words, but he knows what the dream’s about. Back at the regent’s house, he would wake up scared and alone with no way of explaining why and only tears to console himself with until he fell back to sleep.

But this time, Sebastian had been with him. In his sleep, Kurt heard Sebastian soothe him, talk to him. He heard Sebastian promise that he wouldn’t let anyone hurt him again.

Those words, spoken as Kurt gave in to unconsciousness, made all the difference.

But Sebastian can’t have done it because he cares for him. Pity maybe, but not care. There must be another reason. Did his son suffer from nightmares? Did his husband?

Exactly how much does Kurt resemble Sebastian’s husband Aaron? Is it just the way he looks? Is that enough to inspire the kind of affection Sebastian has shown him after only a few days?

“Good morning, little one,” Kurt hears Sebastian murmur. Kurt peeks up into Sebastian’s tired face.

“How did you know I was awake?” Kurt asks.

“Your breathing changes when you wake up,” Sebastian says with a long, heavy sigh. “And you hold it when you’re thinking.”

“Oh,” Kurt says, feeling oddly vulnerable that Sebastian can read him so easily.

“Would you do me a favor?” Sebastian asks.

“Anything,” Kurt says, and at this moment he finds himself meaning _anything_.

“Put your arm around me?”

Kurt doesn’t hesitate, winding an arm around Sebastian’s waist and snuggling close, pressing his cheek to the man’s chest, above his heart. When Sebastian sighs again, it’s less heavy, not quite as burdened.

“How long have you been awake?” Kurt asks.

“A while,” Sebastian says, a yawn escaping his mouth as he speaks. Kurt accepts that as an answer, though he suspects Sebastian didn’t go back to sleep after his ordeal.

“Thank you, by the way,” Kurt says.

“For what?” Sebastian takes a deep breath as he waits for Kurt to answer, already preparing to argue. Suddenly Kurt doesn’t feel right thanking Sebastian for what he did last night – especially since Kurt woke the worn-out man from a sound sleep with one of his stupid nightmares.

“For bringing me with you,” Kurt says instead. “For inviting me along when you didn’t need to.”

_For saving my life._

The words are there, but Kurt doesn’t say them. He doesn’t want them excused away.

“You’re welcome,” Sebastian replies, a small smile in his voice, “but like I said, I had reasons for bringing you along. Selfish reasons.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Kurt hums in response. He doesn’t want to buy into Sebastian’s self-serving routine that crops up from time to time, though he’s also not willing to create the fantasy that Sebastian is some kind of white knight that rode along and rescued him in his hour of need.

Kurt would rather believe that Sebastian is an honest, good man, because it would be nice to know that they exist in the world.

“Anyway,” Sebastian continues, giving Kurt a final squeeze before preparing to get up, “we should get started with breakfast and whatnot. We have a long day ahead of us till we reach our next camp.”

“Let me?” Kurt begs, wiggling his way out from underneath the blanket. “You look exhausted.”

“It’s alright, Kurt,” Sebastian says, reaching for Kurt, trying to catch him back, “I…”

“Please?” Kurt bats his eyelashes playfully like a child begging for another piece of candy, but Kurt doesn’t understand. Sebastian welcomes Kurt’s help, but he doesn’t want to see this boy do anything that resembles serving him. He doesn’t want Kurt to think this is something he needs to do to pay him back.

Kurt feeling the need to repay Sebastian might cross into dangerous territory.

Kurt’s boyish smile fades, but not into sadness – into sincerity.

Kurt isn’t the only one who doesn’t understand.

“Please,” Kurt says, taking Sebastian’s hand and kissing it - not like a supplicant or like a slave, but like a boy…one who might be developing a bit of a crush, “let me do this. Let me do this for you.”

Sebastian looks at Kurt, his eyes not downcast but gazing back at Sebastian through long lashes, pleading for Sebastian to say yes. Kurt is trying to find his place in the world now that he has no one but himself to serve, but he’s still lost. _This_ he feels comfortable with. It could cause more harm than good for Sebastian to refuse him.

“Alright,” Sebastian concedes, wrapping up in the blanket and turning on his side to face away from Kurt’s beaming face, not at all comfortable with this idea. “Just don’t set the campsite on fire.”

***

Restarting the fire isn’t hard, which Kurt is thankful for, since he has no experience whatsoever making a campfire from scratch. When he had offered to make breakfast, he figured he would simply follow in Sebastian’s footsteps from the night before, but as he gathers kindling he discovers he hasn’t a clue how the actual fire had been created. He puts a hand over the ashes and finds that they’re warm. He prods at them with a stick, mixing the warm with the cool, and sees cinders turn red and crackle with hidden heat. He creates a small tent of dried twigs and leaves, and gets a decent fire burning, hot enough to boil water for coffee. Breakfast proves to be a simple thing to throw together, thanks to Carole’s generosity. So Kurt’s only real contribution to the meal is the presentation.

Even with the meal prepared quickly, Kurt takes his time, cleaning up the supplies that he can, getting them ready to load into the buckboard, then giving Sebastian’s horse breakfast and a brush down, allowing Sebastian extra time to sleep. They should really get back on the trail and put miles beneath their feet before the sun climbs too high in the sky, but there’s a fair amount of cloud cover overhead this morning. With any luck, it’ll take its time burning off and give them shade for their journey.

When Sebastian’s horse becomes restless and the fire dies back down, Kurt brings Sebastian his meal. He lays down a clean red cloth he found among Sebastian’s collection of clothes. He sets their two plates on it, side by side, each one holding a slice of bread smothered with jam, dried meat, and a pickled egg a piece. He sets a mug of coffee down in front of Sebastian’s nose to lure the man awake.

Kurt had considered waking Sebastian with a kiss, but he left that notion behind. He does, however, pick a handful of wildflowers and sets them in an empty glass jar for looks – a piece of sunshine until the real one makes an appearance.

Sebastian opens one eye at the smell of the coffee. He sees the mug first, then the plates, then Kurt, kneeling, sitting on his heels and waiting patiently for Sebastian to rise.

“It’s late,” Sebastian says, his eye flicking up at the sky, taking in the muted light.

“I wanted you to rest,” Kurt answers quietly.

Sebastian nods. He would not have chosen to sleep in this late, but he needed it. He’s grateful that decision was taken out of his hands this once.

It’s the same thing Aaron would have done.

Sebastian notices the two breakfast plates and frowns.

“You…you didn’t eat yet?” he asks, wiping a hand across his face and opening both eyes.

“I wanted to wait for you,” Kurt says, folding his hands in front of him. Sebastian looks at Kurt and raises a challenging eyebrow.

“You can eat, Kurt,” Sebastian says, pushing the plate his way.

Kurt shifts on his knees, inching away from the temptation to do just that.

“I’m okay to wait,” Kurt says, smiling politely.

Sebastian sits up, crosses his legs, and stares Kurt in the eyes.

“I’m not taking a single bite until you take one first.”

Kurt gasps, but he doesn’t argue, his eyes dropping along with his smile.

“Yes, sir,” he says.

“Kurt…don’t call me _sir_.”

“I’m…I’m sorry…”

Kurt shrinks in on himself, which is the opposite outcome Sebastian had originally intended. Sebastian wants Kurt to relish in his new freedom and independence, but the binds that held him for so long are embedded deep. They’re heavy as well – Sebastian can tell by the way Kurt sits, waiting for the next harsh words out of Sebastian’s mouth. Sebastian needs to curb his tongue. It occurs to him that this time he should apologize, but then he’d have to admit to Kurt how badly it hurts watching Kurt obey, that it stings Sebastian to see him act like this, even though Kurt can’t help it.

“Look,” Sebastian says, running a hand through his messy hair, “I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable. I’m doing this for your own good. There’s some rough country we’re heading into, and it’s best if folks don’t know you’re a…that you _were_ a slave.” Kurt nods slightly, but doesn’t lift his gaze, embarrassment coloring his cheeks. “So it’d be best if you learned how to act disrespectful like the rest of us slobs so no one gets suspicious.”

“Yes, sir…uh…Sebastian,” Kurt replies, looking at the food on his plate, not making a move to eat.

Sebastian sighs and shakes his head. He leans over the plates until their foreheads meet, coming up with an idea he’s sure will bring back Kurt’s smile _and_ his appetite.

“If you take the first bite,” Sebastian whispers, “I’ll give you another kiss.”

Kurt’s eyes snap up to meet Sebastian’s.

“I thought that might bring you back,” Sebastian says with a smirk. “And I’ll tell you what – if you finish your meal, I’ll give you another.”

Kurt licks his lips, his gaze innocent but his eyes as full of want and need as any Sebastian has ever seen. Sebastian thought giving away a kiss or two would be a minor thing, but the heat in Kurt’s eyes strikes him straight through the heart, making it beat off rhythm.

Kurt _wants_ a kiss from Sebastian – he wants it badly.

Kurt’s hand hovers over his slice of bread, but he still looks unsure.

“Go on,” Sebastian dares him. “Take a bite…I want my kiss.” He looks at Kurt’s lips and licks his own to get his point across.

Kurt breaks off a piece of the bread and jam, and lifts it to his lips with shaking fingers. Kurt keeps his eyes locked on Sebastian’s as he brings the bread to his mouth, drops it on his tongue, then starts to chew. Sebastian smiles seductively, even if that wasn’t his goal. He doesn’t wait for Kurt to swallow before he moves in for his kiss, pressing his lips against Kurt’s and sucking Kurt’s lower lip gently into his mouth. Kurt stops chewing, stunned by Sebastian’s sudden kiss, whimpering when his lip enters Sebastian’s mouth. When Sebastian pulls away, Kurt swallows his bite of bread hard, and Sebastian licks his lips again.

“Mmm,” he says. “Blueberry.”

Kurt chuckles as if that’s the most ludicrous comment Sebastian could have made when Kurt’s whole body is ready to explode.

“Did you like that?” Sebastian asks. He wasn’t going to at first. He was going to start in on his meal and not even mention it, but he had to know.

“Y-yes,” Kurt stammers. “Bl-blueberry is one of my favorites.”

“Not that,” Sebastian laughs, breaking off a piece of bread for himself.

“I know,” Kurt admits, the blank expression of shock remaining on his face but his cheeks flooding with color, “but we were not permitted to talk about such things at the regent’s house. We were not expected to…to _like_ the things we did.”

“You’re not at the regent’s house,” Sebastian says, keeping his voice soft but dialing down the flirting. “But forgive me. I was just curious.”

Sebastian chews his bread, keeping his eyes on the egg and meat on his plate, confused by his own question.

“I _do_ like it,” Kurt says, his hand stuck in the air above his plate as he prepares to break off another piece of bread, remembering that he has the chance to earn one more kiss. “I like kissing you. I’ve never…kissed anyone before.”

Sebastian looks at Kurt, the gravity of Kurt’s words furrowing Sebastian’s brow.

“But, in my room, that first night, you tried to…”

Kurt bites his lip.

“I _wanted_ to kiss you. I thought, maybe…”

Kurt can’t seem to finish, his training kicking in and shutting him down.

“So, I…”

“You were my first kiss,” Kurt finishes for him with a shy twist on his lips.

Sebastian throws down his remaining bit of bread and curses to himself.

“What?” Kurt asks. Sebastian catches a hint of hurt in Kurt’s tone and curses himself more. It’s been a while since he’s had to watch out for someone else’s feelings, and he’s fucking up all over the place.

“Nothing,” Sebastian says. “Not you. It’s just…if I’d known, I would have kissed you better.”

“Don’t apologize,” Kurt says. “I thought…I thought it was lovely. Besides, if I finish my meal, you get to try again.”

Kurt ducks his chin to his chest as he moves on to his meat, and Sebastian, knocked agog by Kurt’s comment, starts to grin.

They talk no more about kissing or the regent’s house during breakfast, rushing to finish their meal and make up lost time while enjoying the cool morning air - a rare treat in a place as dry and arid as the outlying lands. When the last crumbs are eaten off Kurt’s and Sebastian’s plates, Kurt starts to clear them, but Sebastian puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Leave the plates a moment,” he commands, “and sit here with me.” He gestures for Kurt, patting the wood slats between his legs, and Kurt sits cross-legged between them, already guessing why. Kurt takes off his shirt half-way, keeping it on his arms and baring his back. Sebastian uncorks his pot of salve and starts applying ointment to the burn on Kurt’s shoulder. Kurt closes his eyes when Sebastian touches him, trying to make the moment last, and it must work because Sebastian takes his time. Kurt feels Sebastian’s breath against the skin of his neck and hears him speak, but in such a low voice that Kurt isn’t sure of his words or the language that they’re in.

But Kurt is curious and he figures there’s no harm in asking.

If Sebastian doesn’t want to tell him, he won’t. Sebastian won’t hurt him for asking. Kurt has to remember that.

“What are you doing?” Kurt asks, peeking over his shoulder.

“I’m praying,” Sebastian answers, and then goes back to his mumbling.

Kurt waits until he feels a break in Sebastian’s prayer.

“Are you praying to heal my wound?” he asks.

“Yes,” Sebastian says, laying a small kiss on the burn, then grabbing the hem of Kurt’s shirt and helping him on with it. “I pray for that, and for you.”

“For me?” Kurt asks with surprise.

“Yes.” Sebastian grabs a jacket and puts it on Kurt over his shirt as a breeze begins to blow. He reaches around Kurt’s torso and starts doing the buttons up the front.

Kurt cranes his neck around. From where he sits, he sees only the top of Sebastian’s head, so he waits till Sebastian raises his face.

“Why do you pray for me?” Kurt asks.

“I pray to heal your soul,” Sebastian says, giving Kurt a hug from behind. “To rid you of your nightmares.”

“Which god do you pray to?” Kurt leans back into Sebastian’s chest, smiling when Sebastian holds him tighter.

“I pray to the God of Creation,” Sebastian says. “The one who made everything you see. The one who blesses us with birth and renewal, who paid a great price to rid us of our sins.”

Kurt puts his arms over Sebastian’s where they wrap around his waist, chewing his lower lip thoughtfully. Kurt looks at their arms – his pale hand against Sebastian’s tan skin, how beautiful the two shades offset one another, how perfect they look joined together.

“Did they not teach you to pray at the regent’s house?” Sebastian asks, laying a cheek in Kurt’s hair.

“They pray to idols at the regent’s house,” Kurt says, tracing up and down Sebastian’s forearm with his fingers, “and to the regent himself. They sing his praises.” Kurt looks up at Sebastian. “My mother prayed to your God, I think. What she used to say about it and what you said sound very similar.”

Sebastian squints at the change of expression on Kurt’s face.

“But you don’t believe?” he asks.

“I don’t believe in God,” Kurt answers sadly. “It’s hard to believe when…” Kurt stops when his voice shakes. Sebastian leans down and places a kiss to Kurt’s forehead.

“I understand,” he says. “Many don’t believe. Many stop believing. There was a time when I stopped believing.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

Kurt thinks he can imagine why, but he doesn’t speak of it. Kurt is a firm believer that people control their own destinies. The concept of an intelligent creator confounds him. If such a being does exist, why would he or she allow men like the regent to kill mothers and kidnap children? But his mother believed with every grain of her being, and maybe understanding why might make him feel close to her again.

“Can you teach me about your God?” he asks.

“Well, I’m afraid that I’m not as devoted as I should be,” Sebastian says, standing up and helping Kurt to his feet, “but you’re in luck. Someone wrote a whole book about him. I have one, if you would like to read it. I use it to practice my reading. You can do the same.”

Kurt nods. “I would like that.”

Kurt stoops for the dishes but Sebastian stops him once again.

“Oh,” Sebastian says, “one other thing…” He snakes an arm around Kurt’s waist and turns the boy around in his embrace. Kurt’s face goes pink as Sebastian puts a hand in Kurt’s hair, holding lightly to the back of his head, and then kisses him, much in the same way he did before, but this kiss he draws out, adding a sweep of his tongue over Kurt’s lips, pulling a moan from his throat.

Like the other kisses, it ends too quickly, but Sebastian can’t risk kissing Kurt longer.

He can’t risk losing his heart to this boy.

“That,” Sebastian says, backing away and leaving Kurt’s arms before he can make the ill-conceived decision to go in for another, “is what you get for eating all your breakfast.”

***

The trail they ride is much the same as the trail the day before with one significant feature that Kurt notices right away - the silence. An extreme nothingness seems to suck up all the sound, even the ones in close proximity to him, like the rocking of the buckboard, the clopping of the horse’s hooves into the dust, the wheels digging into the ground with their hollow creak, until the only thing he can hear is the sound of his own breathing.

It’s maddening. It makes Kurt want to scream. He thinks of Sebastian riding this trail, moving his many head of cattle, choking on dust, sweltering beneath the brutal sun in this miserable void of quiet. How can a man do this? How can someone live like this, traveling these roads alone, and not go completely insane?

Unless Sebastian wasn’t alone. Maybe his husband went with him. Or his son. So many questions circulate through his brain. Whether he voices one subconsciously out loud or not, Sebastian seems to know his thoughts.

“I can hear you thinking kinda loudly over there, little one,” he says. “What’s up?”

“I was just wondering,” Kurt starts, yelling louder than necessary to talk over the nothing, “how could you do this alone? I think I’d go crazy.”

Sebastian keeps his eye on the horizon, watching the sun rise, the sky growing brighter with every step forward his horse takes. Without a thought, he takes the hat off his head and moves it onto Kurt’s.

“Well, one man can’t move a herd,” he answers, his explanation guarded, as if debating how much exactly he’s willing to tell. “I had help – a few hands, some hired men when the heads of cattle got past a hundred.” Sebastian sucks a breath in through his teeth. “I had started teaching my son to do it – to move the herd with me.”

“The regent’s house was never quiet,” Kurt puts in, desperate to keep the conversation going, afraid Sebastian might shut down at the mention of his son. “Even at night. There was always music playing or people laughing or yelling or…um…having relations…”

Sebastian smirks at Kurt’s word usage.

“ _Loud_ relations?” Sebastian teases.

Kurt nods.

“Sometimes it was required of us…to scream,” Kurt says. “Sometimes there were…we were…” Kurt stares straight ahead, searching his head for words he’s able to say.

“Was it quiet at home?” Sebastian intervenes, pulling Kurt away from those horrible memories. “Where you lived on the farm with your folks?”

“Yes and no,” Kurt answers, smiling. “My mother sang and my father…he was always fixing things around the house, around the farm, repairing equipment for the neighbors. He had a real knack for it. Taught me some. Then we had the animals. They made noise constantly, but not so that it bothered me. Sometimes I would lie out on the grass in the sun by the pond and listen to them talk to one another, listen to the water move with the wind, or the birds singing as they passed by overhead, almost as if they were saying hello and goodbye to me.” Kurt sighs, dreamy and sad. “No, it wasn’t quiet, but it was peaceful and calm.”

“I’ll tell you what, little one, I could sure do with some calm and peace,” Sebastian admits. “Maybe when we find this farm of yours, I can stay for a while? A day or two tops, to unwind and get my bearings?”

“I’d like that,” Kurt says, smiling brighter. “I’m sure my father won’t mind. He’ll be much indebted to you for bringing me home.”

“I’m not collecting any debts on your account. I’m just looking for a little peace.”

Kurt imagines bringing Sebastian to his favorite spot by the pond and lying side by side under the sun, maybe napping out there, wrapped around each other the way they do when they sleep. It’s kind of an incongruous picture – tough and rugged Sebastian relaxing by Kurt’s tiny pond, but it’s a romantic one, too.

“Although…” Sebastian picks up again, “there is maybe one other thing.”

Kurt holds his next breath. Will this be it? Will Sebastian tell Kurt now what he really expects? The other shoe that Kurt’s waiting to drop?

“And what would that be?” Kurt asks with eyes firmly glued to the sky, detaching for a moment to accept his fate. And he’ll do so gladly. Whatever Sebastian asks for, he deserves it.

“You said you sang at the regent’s house.”

“Yes,” Kurt says, raising an eyebrow beneath the brim of the hat.

“Maybe, when you’re up to it, you can sing for me.”

Kurt turns his eyes from the sky to Sebastian, who has been watching him for a while.

“I think that can be arranged.”

***

Before the sun begins its descent, Kurt starts to notice a sweeter smell to the air, and bird song punctuates the silence. On the dusty ground he sees a spattering of green, then another, and another, until a trail of grass clumps leads them along, indicating there’s water nearby.

And thank goodness for that. Kurt’s skin has become so filthy that it looks three shades darker. Didn’t he wash this blanket of dirt off a few days ago? It should remind him of being abandoned out on the dirt road, but it doesn’t. This journey he’s on is a new adventure, a different adventure, an adventure with a possible happy ending, and it’s time for Kurt to start doing a better job of leaving the past in the past.

“Okay,” Sebastian says, pulling his horse and buckboard into the grass, heading off the trail, “we’re going to be spending the night here, but by tomorrow we should be hitting a town. We can rent a room there if that’s more comfortable for you.”

“I don’t know,” Kurt says. “I kind of like sleeping outside, as long as we’re in the buckboard.”

 _As long as I’m with you_.

Sebastian drives them out far off the main road, so far that Kurt can’t see the trail they were on over the rising dunes of dirt and grass. “That’s a good thing,” Sebastian tells him as he surveys a campsite for the night. “If we can’t see the trail, whatever’s on the trail can’t likely see us either.”

After finding a covert to park his buckboard and removing his horse from the rig, he grabs a washing cloth and a bar of soap, and leads Kurt through the grass to the watering hole so he can bathe while Sebastian finishes setting up camp.

Sebastian’s watering hole is literally that – a hole in the ground, five feet in diameter - just enough space for one person to squeeze into.

“It used to be a well, so it’s lined with stones,” Sebastian says. “It’s clean water. Heated, too. Fed by some kind of spring or something underneath.”

“But, it’s so far away from the campsite,” Kurt points out, glancing over his shoulder to where he can see a corner of the buckboard and the head of Sebastian’s horse. “What do I do if someone comes by?”

“No one will come,” Sebastian assures him. “No one ever comes here. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll stick around with you while you bathe.”

Kurt looks at Sebastian, the man shifting his weight on his feet as if itching to get on with his work. Then he looks off to the distance where the trail lies past the dunes, out beyond his sight in the receding light. Then he looks back at camp, partially set up for the night with so much more work to be done.

“I know you have a lot to do,” Kurt says. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

“You’re sure now?” Sebastian asks but looking visibly relieved. Kurt tries not to take it to heart. He knows Sebastian is tired. He’s not dismissing Kurt, just looking out for them. Kurt can do his part by not acting like a child.

“It’s alright,” Kurt says, taking the soap and the cloth from Sebastian’s hands. “Really. I’ll be fine.”

Sebastian nods, walking backward from the watering hole in the direction of the camp.

“Holler if you need anything,” he says with a wave. “I’ll be able to hear.”

Kurt waves, waiting for Sebastian to turn back around before he starts taking off his clothes. He dips a toe into the water and discovers it is indeed heated, but it’s a foreign heat that tingles his skin with a sizzling noise and a profusion of bubbles when his skin hits it. He lowers his body into it slowly, and the bubbles surround him, eating away at the dirt on his skin without the help of the soap. The bubbles remind him of fingertips caressing his skin.

It makes Kurt think of Sebastian.

He leans his head back and wets his hair, combing the dirt from the strands, letting the bubbles do their work.

It’s an unusual sensation, being suspended upright like this, buoyant in the water. He doesn’t know how deep this well is, but he feels no ground beneath his feet, and something in the water keeps him afloat so even when he tries to duck down beneath the surface in search of a bottom, he bobs right back up. At least it’s reassuring to know he won’t drown.

His eyes drift closed and his mind slips away, reaching for sleep with a solid grasp regardless of how he longs to stay awake, to talk with Sebastian again. But that’s how exhaustion is – caring for nothing and taking when it needs. Kurt grabs the washing cloth off the ledge and scrubs his body, fighting his brain, borrowing time he doesn’t have in order to finish.

***

“It’s nearly dark, Kurt. That means you get supper and it’s my turn…” Sebastian finds Kurt where he left him, his head bowed over the edge of the watering hole, resting on his folded arms, snoring soundly. “Man, but you sure as hell can knock out anywhere, can’t you?” Sebastian chuckles. Kurt doesn’t make a coherent sound in response – nothing but a squeaky moan, and Sebastian chuckles harder. “Come on. Let’s get you out of there before you absorb all the water, hey, little one?” Sebastian pulls Kurt’s body from the watering hole, and for the first time gets a good look at his naked body. He positions Kurt cradled in his arms, draping a towel over his privates.

Sebastian has to, or else he’ll keep staring.

“Or maybe _not so little_ , huh?” Sebastian mutters beneath his breath. “I can see why you were the court favorite. Maybe I need to change your name.”

“No,” Kurt mumbles, resting his head into Sebastian’s shoulder. “Don’t…don’t change it. I like it.”

Kurt hadn’t ever had a nickname before that he liked. His mother called him pet names like _darling_ and _sweetheart_. His father called him _boy_. At the regent’s house, he was called a number of foul names, things every slave was called – whore, wretch, bitch, dog…

But _little one_ – Sebastian came up with that himself, and it had a ring of caring to it. He may have called his husband the same, but it makes Kurt feel special nonetheless.

“You do, huh?” Sebastian asks. Kurt doesn’t answer, but he smiles before his head nods and he falls back to sleep. “Then I won’t change it,” Sebastian says, holding Kurt’s wet body close to his so he can feel Kurt’s bare skin against him. “I’ll let you keep it.”

***

The second time Kurt wakes, it’s to the sound of screaming. Or a single scream that echoes across the grassy land. It sounds like a woman screaming out in fear and pain.

It sounds like his mother.

Kurt’s heart doesn’t know whether to race like a mad horse and head for the hills or come to a full stop.

He hears the scream again, but this time it’s accompanied by the beating of wings above his head, causing him to jump.

“It’s a hawk, Sebastian,” Kurt says with a laugh. “Just a dumb old…”

Kurt is alone, a plate of food close by his head, and himself dressed in dry clothes Kurt doesn’t remember changing into. He’s tucked into their makeshift bed with the blankets wrapped around his body to keep him warm, probably so he wouldn’t wake up frightened. It would have worked if not for that gosh-darned hawk. Kurt sits up and looks around at the vacant campsite and the grass stretching out for miles, black sky meeting the horizon at every turn with no Sebastian in sight. Sebastian’s horse lay nearby, napping in the grass.

Sebastian wouldn’t leave without his horse, not if he was truly leaving.

Kurt takes a second to school his heart and think things through. He realizes that Sebastian hadn’t yet taken a bath before Kurt fell asleep, and since he likes to bathe alone, that’s where he must be.

Logically, Kurt knows that has to be the truth, but the lump lodged in his throat convinces him to climb out of the buckboard and check.

He picks the path through the grass to the watering hole as near as he can remember it, following the murmur of a voice he can hear in the air. The glow of a fire catches his eye, and something tells him that’s what he’s looking for. He walks toward it, choosing his steps cautiously so as not to bring attention to himself. Closer Kurt creeps until he sees Sebastian, sitting on the edge of the watering hole. This is more of Sebastian than Kurt has seen before, and even though it’s an invasion of the man’s privacy, Kurt has to look. Kurt’s never seen such a man. Sebastian’s naked body perched on the rock ledge with his legs dangling in the water mystifies Kurt. Sebastian has made a small camp here. He’s built himself a fire nearby so he can sit this way and keep warm. Kurt sees Sebastian’s clothes folded on a rock, a plate and mug from dinner sitting empty in the grass. It seems like Sebastian’s been here a while, communing with the darkness.

The fire offers Kurt a clear view of Sebastian’s back, which Kurt hasn’t seen much of before; Sebastian rarely keeps his bare back to Kurt. Shifting between black and gold, the outline of his muscles are visible in the firelight, and what looks like the fading shadows of crisscrossed bruises. From whips? Or a belt? Sebastian carries no mark, not like Kurt, so he wasn’t a slave. But someone has beaten him.

He sees Sebastian lift his arms from the water, putting one hand on the ledge and the other in his lap, and Kurt ducks back, sure that Sebastian’s making to get out of the water. What if he heard Kurt sneaking around in the dark? What if he gets angry at Kurt for spying? So many _what ifs_ linger in Kurt’s mind as far as Sebastian is concerned. But Sebastian is not one of those men, not like the ones who have hurt him, and he has to keep reminding himself. He stays his ground and waits, bracing to greet Sebastian when he climbs from the water, ready to apologize and explain his actions.

But Sebastian doesn’t leave the watering hole. Kurt watches in awe as Sebastian’s hand in his lap moves – slowly at first, and then fast, then slowly again. Sebastian moans, leaning back, his head dropping back on his shoulders with his eyes shut to the world around him.

“Aaron,” he whispers as his hand continues to move. “Oh, Aaron…”

Kurt becomes paralyzed when he realizes what he’s watching. If this had been the regent’s house and he was invading the privacy of someone at court, he would be blinded for sure. Had he done such a thing for himself, stroked himself, given himself pleasure, he would have had a hand taken off. He had seen several sex slaves removed of one hand. They were still kept on in their duties because there were strange men who visited court who had a liking for that – an inclination Kurt didn’t understand. Maybe it was because those handicapped slaves were weaker, less likely to fight. Kurt tried not to think about it too much. The thought of someone preferring the services of a slave who could not fight them off – specifically because they could not fight – made him sick to his stomach.

Kurt wants to move closer, to see Sebastian more fully, but he can’t without revealing himself. He wants to be with Sebastian, remove Sebastian’s hand and replace it with his own, but he dares not – especially when Sebastian calls out the name of his husband.

Kurt feels electricity building in the air.

Sebastian is not alone.

Everything in Kurt’s body tells him he should leave, go back to bed and try to un-see this moment he was not privy to, but he can’t make his body move. His body reacts to Sebastian’s moans, his legs wobbling, his cock throbbing, his hand reaching to touch it, but instinct and training block that compulsion, forcing it painfully away.

Kurt watches Sebastian’s head roll from shoulder to shoulder, his arm tensing, his legs gripping harder on the lip of the watering hole, his body rocking back and forth as he’s readying to cum.

“Aaron,” Sebastian groans. “Aaron…oh, Aaron…”

In the silent dark, it becomes a song. A breeze meanders low through the grass, circling the fire, making it flicker. Fingers of fire reach over its ring of rocks and right to Sebastian, stretching out his way, and Kurt can’t help but wonder…

But then Sebastian’s voice shatters - what was once a name dissolves into nothing but a sound, and then it’s gone, lifted with the breeze and carried away.

And Sebastian, slumping in on himself with his spent cock softening in his hand, looks tired and alone.

“What in the fargin’ hell am I doin’, Aaron?” Sebastian asks, growling his frustration into the evening air, raising his head to the sky the way some people do in prayer. “What am I doing?” Sebastian rinses his soiled hand in the water and then raises his wet hands to his face. “I need you, Aaron. You said you’d always…you’d always be with me. Why? Why did you havta go so early?” Sebastian’s arms begin to tremble, the hands at his face rising up to grab fistfuls of his hair, starting to tug, yanking so hard that Kurt fears Sebastian might rip them from his scalp. A grumble erupts from Sebastian’s throat that turns into a scream, breaking from his body through gritted teeth. He drops his fists onto his thighs, pummeling them over and over, making bruises form. “Why?” he asks with each strike until his arms become weak and he gives over to defeat. “Why did you havta leave me?”

Then, with his back bent and his head bowed, Sebastian cries – cries that rake tremors throughout his whole body and rattles the air like painful claps of thunder before a storm, when the skies open up and heaven begins to weep.

Kurt had heard plenty of boys cry before – stolen from their parents, dragged to the regent’s house, whipped, starved, raped, taught discipline and obedience by whatever means the regent and the masters felt necessary. A person would need to be positively inhuman to withstand all that without shedding a tear. _Those_ cries Kurt had taught himself over long nights to push out of his mind until they no longer affected him as much. But Kurt had only ever heard one man cry before and that was his father, on the day the regent’s men came for him…the day his mother died.

Listening to Sebastian cry is a horrible, frightening thing. Kurt doesn’t want to see Sebastian broken down into tears, doesn’t want to know that such a thing can happen. Not because it makes Sebastian less of a man. Kurt would never think that about Sebastian. But because Kurt doesn’t know how to help him – and he desperately wants to help him. Kurt wants to walk up to him with confidence in his steps. He wants to wash Sebastian’s body, massage his skin, bring him peace. He longs to wrap his arms around the man’s shoulders, kiss him gently, and tell him everything is going to be okay.

But Kurt can’t do those things, and even if he could, Sebastian doesn’t likely want his help anyway.

He wants Aaron.

Aaron must have been a remarkable person if he could create a dent in a man like Sebastian.

Kurt backs away. On quiet footsteps, he returns to the buckboard, his bed of blankets, and a troubled sleep, giving Sebastian space to grieve his husband in private.

Kurt balances on the tenuous boundary of sleep when Sebastian climbs back into the buckboard and slips beneath the blankets, wrapping his arms around the young boy and holding him tight. It’s a squeeze with the two of them laid so close together, but it’s comfortable for Kurt – giving him a sense of safety and security. Even though he knows it’s bred from a place of grief, a place of pain, he accepts it, and with Sebastian’s lips marking a trail from Kurt’s neck to the burn on his shoulder, Kurt falls asleep in no time at all.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Similar warnings as before for anxiety, for passing mentions of things that happened to Kurt during his time as a slave, and a vague discussion about religion.

Someone slips into bed behind Kurt and wraps their arms around him, and for the first time in his life, he’s not afraid, not repulsed, not disgusted at himself or his life or the things he’s about to do. The man kisses Kurt’s neck, and Kurt gains a profound sense of calm from it. A touch follows – gentle and feather-light along his shoulder, pausing at one spot in particular, then down his arm to his hand, lacing their fingers together. The touches are lazy, undemanding; they seem as if they’re there for Kurt’s comfort, and not solely for someone else’s pleasure. This man, he doesn’t pry Kurt open, doesn’t force himself inside Kurt’s body, doesn’t rip Kurt apart. He kisses Kurt continuously, brushing warm lips down the back of his neck to his spine, and Kurt does something he’s never willingly, honestly done before.

He moans.

The man behind Kurt smiles. Kurt can feel it on his neck.

Kurt clears his mind of his fears, his anxiety, and becomes absolutely submissive – absorbing this man’s touch, welcoming it, arching his body to beg for more.

Callused hands – not the overly soft, featureless hands he’s used to – slide over his skin, caressing every subtle curve of his body, tracing his figure as if those hands have known him forever.

A husky voice, jagged to start but with a finish as smooth as double-malt whiskey, whispers a chant of his name.

_“Kurt…oh, Kurt…Kurt...”_

“Yes,” Kurt sighs. That voice bleeds into him, finding his cracks, his crevices, and filling them in, enveloping him from the inside with its warmth. It’s a warmth that he’s only recently become acquainted with, and comes at him in a form he’s never known.

He could be mistaken, but it feels like love.

There’s no doubt in Kurt’s mind that the man behind him desires him, adores him.

But loves him? It’s too much to hope for, but Kurt still hopes _yes_. He’s tried not to be a romantic when it comes to sex and intimacy, but he can’t help imagining that it would be a magical experience if it came with love attached. If he had a taste of it, then he might understand why people yearn for love, why people fight for it. Why people are willing to die for it.

Why some people can’t let go of it, even when it’s gone.

Whatever it is, he wants more. He _needs_ more.

Kurt’s fingers tighten within the hand holding his. His body moves on its own, in rhythm with a force inside him, drawing from him, feeding off him, gasp after gasp, moan after moan. Whatever has been missing from his existence, whatever he has been searching for, he finds it here in the arms of this faceless lover. It’s liberating, finally setting his body free this way, giving himself permission to enjoy, but in some ways, he doesn’t want it to be real. He doesn’t want his life, his identity, to rely on any man. But this man is different. Kurt knows he is. Even without seeing him, Kurt knows. The man holds Kurt in his arms and breathes against his skin.

_“Kurt…Kurt…oh Kurt…”_

A sense of completion washes through Kurt so rapidly, he has no way to predict the onslaught. It happens before he knows it, before he slips from the dream and recognizes what his body is doing.

“Oh, no…” Kurt shudders, reaching down his body with trembling hands. He doesn’t need to, though, to feel the wetness in the front of his pants. “Oh no, oh no, oh _please_ no.”

“Kurt?” Sebastian murmurs sleepily from his place behind Kurt, wrapping his arms tighter around Kurt’s body as Kurt pushes away. “Kurt? Are you ‘kay? You having ‘nother ( _yawn_ ) nightmare?”

Kurt springs out of Sebastian’s arms, wriggling free like a frightened rabbit, his wide eyes locking on Sebastian’s. Through heavy lids, Sebastian sees Kurt’s terrified face. His attention drawn to the way Kurt’s arms cradle his stomach, Sebastian’s eyes travel down Kurt’s body. Kurt scuttles backward and leaps from the buckboard before Sebastian’s gaze reaches the offending spot.

“Kurt…” Sebastian sits up, reaching out for him. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

“No, I…” Kurt steps back, bent over the arms wrapped around his waist, hiding his shame. “I’m sorry, but I have to…I have to go…for a second…to wash up…”

Kurt races off in the direction of the watering hole, tears of humiliation falling from his eyes, coupled with agitated cries. He should be happy. He was thinking of this the other day, of his body returning to a sense of normalcy, the way most people enjoy - the way _Sebastian_ enjoys. But why now? And why didn’t he wake up before it was too late to stop it, the way he had been trained to?

 _Could_ he have been able to stop it? Would his body have listened to him?

Kurt stumbles up to the old well and slides into the water, pants and all. He pulls them off, fighting the water as the material clings to him, and starts to scrub at them furiously even though he hasn’t a lick of soap on him. His tears dry but his cries continue, his cheeks burning red. He nearly scrubs a hole straight through the fabric, but his focus is no longer on the stain.

What is Sebastian going to say? Kurt is certain Sebastian won’t hurt him. He’s gotten over that fear…mostly.

But what if Sebastian doesn’t want to deal with _this_ , for all the kisses he’s given him?

Kurt hears the snapping of twigs and a crunching of dry dirt as footsteps approach, and he quiets his cries. He deposits the soaked and beaten pants onto the rock ledge of the watering hole. Sebastian stops at the edge, standing still, giving Kurt time to become comfortable in his presence again. Kurt stays in the water, unmoving, his back turned, his head bowed.

“You didn’t eat your dinner from last night,” Sebastian says first.

Kurt doesn’t speak, but nods in response. Sebastian wants to say something about it, about how important it is for Kurt to eat the food he’s given, but he lets it slide.

“I brought you a towel, your shoes, some dry clothes…” Sebastian puts the shoes down by the water’s edge, then hangs the other items in order – shirt first, pants next, then towel - over the branch of a nearby tree. “I didn’t think you’d want to be running back to the camp in your altogether.”

“Thanks,” Kurt mumbles. Kurt doesn’t turn to face him. He can’t. And yet, he doesn’t want Sebastian to go, either. Ultimately, Kurt would like to turn back time and start this morning over, move on from where they left off yesterday and not from his body’s embarrassing reaction to his dream.

Such a glorious dream.

“I also found you a hat of your own,” Sebastian says, followed by an easy laugh to blow things over. “You know, I think I might be getting a wicked sunburn on my scalp from lending you mine.”

“I’m…I’m sorry.”

“No reason to be sorry. Better me than you, with your fair skin and all.” Kurt hears Sebastian shuffling his feet in the dirt, sort of marching in place, unsure whether he should stay or go. “Oh, and I found that book I promised you. You can read it on the trail if you’d like, seeing as there’s not much else to do, nothing really to look at.”

Kurt nods his head.

“Thank you.”

Kurt’s taciturn behavior makes Sebastian’s mind up for him, and he settles for sitting on a nearby rock.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sebastian asks. He isn’t about to ask Kurt outright about his dream, which means he might already know what it was about, and Kurt wants to die – sink into the water and drown. It seems epically unfair that that isn’t even an option, with the unusual water feeding the well keeping him afloat.

“No, not really, if it’s all the same to you,” Kurt answers, turning to face Sebastian but with his eyes fixed elsewhere.

“You know, you don’t have to be ashamed,” Sebastian says. “It happens to everyone.”

“I know,” Kurt says quickly, hoping that Sebastian won’t feel a need to explain any further. Not now. Kurt’s not ready. “But, I’ve spent so much of my life repressing _that_. I just don’t understand…why now?”

“Well, I expect your body’s adjusting to your new life,” Sebastian explains, wringing his hands in discomfort. “No more rules, no more restrictions.”

“Is that what you’re doing? Adjusting?” The question comes out snappish, and dances dangerously close to revealing the fact that Kurt had caught Sebastian bathing in the watering hole the night before – bathing and fantasizing about his husband.

Sebastian’s jaw tightens, his eyes harden, and Kurt thinks that Sebastian might already know. Sebastian shifts his gaze to stare directly into Kurt’s eyes and he smirks.

“It seems you might have a sharp tongue on you yet, little one,” he says, dropping to his knees and crawling over to the ledge of the well. “Why don’t you come over here and let me see?” Kurt inches over, drifting in the small pool of water, willing to follow almost any order of Sebastian’s if it leads to this. Sebastian moves in for a kiss, then he stops, the teasing expression lost on his face. “Or maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I’m taking too many liberties as far as you’re concerned.”

“No,” Kurt says quickly, his voice edged with panic, splashing Sebastian unintentionally as he attempts to bring Sebastian back. “Please? Don’t…”

Sebastian kisses Kurt, smiling so Kurt can feel it, so Kurt knows he’s only teasing, and once Kurt realizes it, once his heart stops beating unevenly in his chest, he smiles back. Sebastian doesn’t kiss him deeply – not yet. He doesn’t think it’s right. Regardless of Kurt’s objections, Sebastian still feels he’s overstepping boundaries, taking advantage, or maybe giving Kurt false hopes.

But it’s really hard to save yourself from drowning when the water’s already over your head.

Sebastian pushes away from Kurt, and Kurt looks at him, concern wrinkling his brow.

“Is it adjusting?” he asks innocently. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Sebastian thinks Kurt’s question over. Even though his choice doesn’t require much deliberation, he struggles to decide what answer is the best to give.

“I’m coping,” he says.

Kurt’s brow wrinkles further.

“My being here…does it help…or does it hurt?”

Sebastian smiles, a touch of guilt in the creases at the corners of his mouth, and kisses Kurt on the forehead.

“It helps more than it hurts.” Sebastian sighs, regaining his feet, needing, as he often does, distance from this too-tempting boy. “Why don’t you finish up and you can have a bite to eat? I’ve got the camp packed up and I’ve already broken my fast. We need to hit the trail, so you can eat on the road, if that’s alright.”

“That’ll be fine,” Kurt says, sad that he lost his chance to eat with Sebastian. Kurt has started to cherish those moments, such as they are. It brings back memories of eating at home, around the wood table his father built and meticulously carved. Kurt always sat beside his mother, across from his father. Meal times were sacred in the Hummel household. Sometimes, when there was much to talk about, a single meal might last close to an hour, even if there were chores around the farm to get done. It was like time stopped while they sat together at that table, sharing food and ideas and love.

 _Love_.

Kurt wants to feel that again, more desperately than he ever thought he would, and sitting across from Sebastian, talking or not talking over a plate of food, has been as close to that feeling as he’s had in forever.

Kurt watches Sebastian walk away, back strong and tall the way it always is, like a man who knows the path to his own destiny, only this time with a slight slog to his step, as if something is holding him back, as if he really doesn’t want to get into the buckboard and ride out of camp. For the few days they’ve been together, the subjects of their talks have been general – the trip, the trail, the weather, or about Kurt, how he’s getting along in the world - but so much of Sebastian remains an enigma. Kurt feels he could live a hundred lifetimes and never truly understand him.

But he hopes Sebastian will give him the chance.

Kurt climbs out of the water once Sebastian has gone. He dries off and dresses. He walks back to camp mostly clothed, his sopping wet pants wrapped in the towel he used to dry himself with, his shirt draped over his arm. When Sebastian sees him approach, fiddling with his shirt one-handed, trying to put it on, Sebastian pounces on him with the clay pot of ointment, uncorking it to spread the medicine over the mark on Kurt’s shoulder.

“So, how’s it looking?” Kurt asks. “Is it healing up like you thought it would?”

“It’s only been a couple of days, Kurt,” Sebastian says, smoothing the ointment into Kurt’s skin. “Give it time. Have faith.”

Kurt scoffs, perhaps unintentionally, but it brings a smile to Sebastian’s face. Maybe there’s more to this boy than he originally thought.

Of course there is, he scolds himself. He has to face the fact. Kurt is flesh and blood. He has a mind. He’s intelligent, a force of his own to be reckoned with, a survivor.

He’s young…and beautiful – so, so beautiful.

He can’t be Sebastian’s surrogate _Aaron_ for long. It’s not fair to Kurt, or to Sebastian. They’ll come a time when Sebastian is going to have to forgive himself for a past he cannot change. If he keeps opening his wounds, if he keeps poking around inside, he’s going to hollow himself out, spend the rest of his years as the walking corpse of Sebastian Smythe.

Aaron would never forgive Sebastian if he did that.

But could Aaron forgive him for taking up with this boy?

Sebastian shakes that question off, lets it fall to the ground like the dust off his shoes. He grabs Kurt’s wet clothes from the boy’s arm and tosses them into the back of the buckboard. He snatches the dry shirt with a mischievous wink and helps Kurt into it. He takes Kurt’s hand and leads him to the buckboard. There’s an ease to the way they move around each other. Sebastian seems to fall in step with Kurt being there, and Kurt feels no need to tiptoe around Sebastian.

Kurt can almost fool himself into believing that they were meant to find one another. His father would say that everything happens for a reason, that there were no accidents. But then that would mean that Kurt’s time at the regent’s house wasn’t a mistake, that he was meant to be there, meant to be tortured, meant to suffer, meant to lose his mother, and Kurt cannot live with that belief.

Like Sebastian said, he has the camp packed and a breakfast laid out for Kurt in the back of the buckboard. Kurt smiles when he sees it – a royal blue cloth set out in place of the red, the jar re-filled with fresh wildflowers, and a plate heaped high with bread smothered in nut butter, dried fruit and fish, and a single egg.

“You expect me to eat all _that_?” Kurt asks, moved by Sebastian’s effort enough to forgive the man for giving him this impossible task.

“I expect you to _try_ ,” Sebastian says, patting Kurt on the rear to get him into the buckboard.

“And…if I eat all of this, do I earn another kiss?” Kurt blinks over his shoulder at Sebastian with a shy smile on his lips.

“There won’t be earning any more kisses around here,” Sebastian says sternly, climbing into the buckboard behind Kurt and over the bench into the driver’s seat. Kurt looks down at his plate, his face crestfallen, completely uninclined to touch a drop of his food. Sebastian leans over the bench, grabs Kurt by the arm, and pulls the boy to him. He kisses Kurt on the mouth, as passionately as he had before, if not a little rougher. Kurt starts giggling before Sebastian stops. “If you want a kiss around here, you just have to ask for it, darling.” Sebastian runs a finger along Kurt’s soft cheek, stroking lightly up and down. “I’m sorry I made it something you felt like you had to earn.” Kurt smiles, biting his lip, and Sebastian pinches his chin. “Now eat up.”

Kurt sits down in front of his plate, legs crossed, and starts immediately in on his food. Sebastian watches Kurt attack his breakfast, then clicks his tongue for his horse to start on their way. Kurt finishes his breakfast, every last bite. He’s amazed at how hungry he is. Back at the regent’s house, he had gotten use to missing meals. He could go a few days without eating, no problem, filling up on water and the scraps of bread he squirreled away in between. But now he has to stop himself from wolfing down his food and potentially making himself vomit. Adjusting. His body’s adjusting. He just hopes that means he’ll fill up, not out.

He doesn’t want to become unattractive in Sebastian’s eyes.

Kurt tidies his plate as best he can, knocking the crumbs over the side for the birds to eat and wiping it clean with the cloth. He finds a safe place for the flowers, tucking them and their jar in a corner of the trunk with Sebastian’s clothes. When he’s done, he grabs the book Sebastian gave him and climbs onto the bench. Sebastian watches Kurt sit and gives him a smile, and Kurt returns it, proud that Sebastian seems happy with him for finishing his meal. The sun has risen higher, the air around them hotter, losing much of its cool morning breeze. Even the cart cutting through doesn’t seem to move the air one bit. Kurt puts the hat Sebastian found for him on his head. He cracks open the cover of the book and starts to read. He finds comfort in the worn leather cover resting against his hands. He can picture Sebastian holding this book in his hands, reading it as he rides along the trail. Maybe he read it to his husband and his son. Maybe the book belonged to Aaron, or maybe it was passed down to him. Kurt’s mother had a book like this one, but with a floral cover she embroidered herself instead of a black leather one. She wrote things in it, in the margins of the pages and on the inside cover – names and dates of births and deaths, so that it bore not only the word of her God, but also a history of their entire family. Maybe Sebastian did the same in his book. Kurt wants to peek at the cover, but Sebastian’s eyes track his progress. He doesn’t want Sebastian to catch him snooping into his personal affairs, even if Sebastian did, in essence, hand them to him.

Kurt reads straight through the morning and into the afternoon. He starts with his finger on the page, tracing underneath the sentences to keep his place. His lips move as he reads. He sounds out certain words aloud – first _thou_ , then _smite_ , then _charity_. Kurt reads for hours. He reads as the sun changes positions in the sky. He reads while Sebastian shares with him their lunch. He reads when Sebastian stops to water his horse. As the sun starts to sink, still hours away from sunset, Kurt is almost halfway through the book. As impressed as Sebastian is with Kurt’s progress, with the devout way he’s taken to the words that Sebastian holds so dear, he wishes that Kurt would put the damned book down for a minute.

He’d like to talk to Kurt. He misses hearing Kurt’s voice.

“How’s that book treating you?” Sebastian asks, breaking off a hunk of dried meat between his teeth and handing Kurt the rest.

“Hmm?” Kurt reaches out a hand to take the offered food when he glimpses it being waved in his peripheral vision, but otherwise doesn’t move his eyes from the page.

“The book. What do you think of it so far?”

“The language is a little hard to get used to,” Kurt says, flipping back through the pages. “I think I read the first nine pages over a dozen times.”

Sebastian nods. It was the same when he first started reading it, but he was nine then. The teacher at the school he attended made them read it out loud, smacking them across the knuckles with a hard wooden ruler when they got any of the words wrong.

“Anything else?”

“Well…” Kurt takes a bite of the dried meat and starts to chew, “there’s a lot of rules.”

Sebastian chuckles to himself at Kurt talking with his mouth full. It borders on being rude, and Sebastian likes it.

“Yeah,” Sebastian agrees. “That there are.”

“I think I’ve broken most of them,” Kurt says with an honest frown. “If there _is_ a heaven up in the sky, I don’t think I’m gettin’ in.”

“Not everybody follows the rules all the time.” Sebastian says it to reassure Kurt, though Sebastian can’t deny he’s had the same doubts about himself. “There’s a lot of, shall we say, grey areas.”

Kurt closes the book over his hand to mark his place and looks up.

“Like what _grey_ _areas_?”

Sebastian shifts in his seat. He’s not comfortable discussing religion, but he doesn’t want to brush Kurt off. Kurt has such a genuine curiosity, a naïve interest, the way he does with most things. How anyone can fool themselves into believing that he’s grown is beyond Sebastian’s comprehension, but then bitterness fills his mouth when he realizes that’s part of Kurt’s appeal. He’s been raised to do adult things, but not to necessarily think in adult ways.

“Well, like the no killing rule,” Sebastian says, feeling that’s a safe enough distance from most of Kurt’s “sins” to start. “What if you’re being chased by a man and he has a knife, and he’s going to kill you, or someone you love, but you find a gun so you kill him first?”

Kurt feels he should object. His mother taught him that there’s no excuse for taking a life, that every soul is sacred. But she probably never thought that someone would savagely murder her and steal her only son away. His mother didn’t deserve to die, but did the man who killed her deserve death then? Does Kurt have the authority to decide? Kurt bites his lip as he gives the matter thought.

“I guess that makes sense,” he says slowly.

Sebastian swallows and turns his eyes away.

“And the stuff you’ve done,” he says, clearing his throat to get past the bile flooding his mouth, “you were… _forced_ …weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Kurt replies, shifting his eyes away. “Most of it, I suppose.”

“Most of it?” Sebastian asks, startled, suddenly burning with too much curiosity at Kurt’s chosen distinction to consider what he’s asking.

“Well…” Kurt’s heel knocks at the wood beneath his feet while he puts his thoughts into words, “the regent’s men, the masters, they’re really good at making it seem like the things you do you _want_ to do. Like, they make you suck someone off…”

Kurt pauses and Sebastian coughs. He didn’t expect Kurt to say anything like that, didn’t expect that vulgar phrase to pass through his lips. It isn’t the crassness of the remark that bothers Sebastian, though. It’s the way his body reacts to it.

It’s the immediate and almost complete way it makes him hot.

“…and maybe you don’t like it, but it’s required,” Kurt continues, not noticing any change in Sebastian’s demeanor – how his hands have tightened around the leather reins or how he’s pulled himself forward on the narrow bench in an effort to will away his arousal. “Later on, though, they give you a choice – you can either do it and earn your dinner, or you can refuse and starve.”

Sebastian looks at Kurt’s physique, at how muscular yet slight he is for a boy of his age, and wonders how many times Kurt refused.

But Kurt was the regent’s favorite. Sebastian doesn’t understand. The whole juxtaposition of being favored and still being abused so horridly makes Sebastian’s head hurt.

 _Do it and earn your dinner…_ Those words stick inside Sebastian’s skull. He feels his stomach flip, tying itself into knots, twisting tighter and tighter until the knots bunch up under his throat. He feels sicker than before that he ever thought to make Kurt _earn_ a kiss from him, even if his intentions were passably noble. He’d stop the cart and kiss Kurt a hundred times if that might make up for his being an ignorant, thoughtless bastard.

“After a while, after you’ve gone to bed hungry a few times and you’ve been weak from it, you get in the habit of dropping to your knees and opening your mouth when you see them coming.”

Kurt drops his head and leans back in his seat, curling in on himself, making himself small – small enough to disappear. Sebastian reaches out a hand and places it carefully on Kurt’s knee.

“That’s not the same as wanting it, darling,” he says softly. He sees on Kurt’s face that he doesn’t entirely believe him. He’s been trained not to believe it. “And even if it was the same, the point is you’ve got to be sorry for breaking the rules. Truly sorry. Then you tell God you’re sorry, and he forgives you.”

Kurt raises a hand to his cheek and brushes a tear away.

“That sounds too easy,” Kurt decides. “It sounds like a trap. Like in the regent’s house.”

Sebastian squeezes Kurt’s knee, then removes his hand to tap the cover of the book in Kurt’s lap.

“ _This_ isn’t like the regent’s house.”

“Yeah?” Kurt says, slipping his hand from the pages and letting the book close unmarked. “The punishments sound the same.” Kurt turns and places the book over the side of the bench and into the buckboard, in the space that has unofficially been designated as his. “So, where are we headed?” Kurt asks, brushing his cheek again, making a spot on his dusty skin cleaner than the rest. “Another watering hole?”

“You can’t see it from here,” Sebastian says, relieved in the change of subject, “but there’s a town over yonder, past those hills.” Sebastian points, but Kurt already has his eyes glued to the hills ahead of them, as if he can see through them to the town beyond. “I’ve been mulling it over some, and I think we can get away with saying you’re my boy. That way people’ll be less inclined to harass you, ask you questions you mightn’t want to answer.”

 _Just like the regent’s house,_ Kurt thinks. _And just like the book_ _– more rules, more dangers, more people trying to impose their lifestyles and beliefs on them_.

“Does it have a name?” Kurt asks, eager to be there already, to get cleaned up and fall asleep in a real bed.

“Yup,” Sebastian answers. “It’s called Kennerstown.”

The name strikes Kurt like a hot iron through the heart, but he doesn’t know exactly why. Suddenly, out in the open air, it feels difficult to breathe.

“Ken---Kennerstown?”

“It’s named after the lord there – Jared Kenner,” Sebastian explains. “We’re going to want to keep a low profile. They’re a little wary of strangers.”

 _Kennerstown_.

Something about it kicks inside Kurt’s brain like an ornery mule. It grabs him by the throat with teeth and claws, making him ache like he’s being starved for breath. Kurt looks in the direction of the town beyond the hills, a great unseen black hole menacing him, wringing memories from his brain that, like the day he was kidnapped, his mind doesn’t want him to remember. Kurt wants to turn around and go back, his feet tapping the wood boards, legs ready to leap from the buckboard and run if Sebastian doesn’t agree to it. Sebastian’s hand finds Kurt’s knee and Kurt puts his hand over it, holding on tight.

“Kurt?” Sebastian turns to look at him, at Kurt’s face becoming paler as the sun sets and the road winds beneath their wheels. “Is there something wrong?”

“I…I don’t know,” Kurt says, sliding along the bench closer to Sebastian, finding safety in the closeness. “I think I…could we, maybe, spend one more night out here?” Kurt stammers, his voice shaking. “I…I’m sorry. I know you have a schedule, but I…I don’t think I’m ready for another town just yet.” Kurt scoots toward Sebastian again. One more scoot closer and he’ll be sitting in Sebastian’s lap.

Sebastian watches Kurt’s eyes, staring off, looking toward the growing hills, filled with unexplained fear.

“Sure,” Sebastian says, pulling the buckboard off the main trail, guiding his horse around until they have their backs to their destination. He puts an arm around Kurt, holding him secure, Kurt’s rigid body a tremor within Sebastian’s embrace. “We’ll camp out one more night, darling. Whatever you want.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

_“Mmm … hm-mmm. Hmm! God, that feels good!”_

_“Don’t it though?” Sebastian murmurs, running calloused hands down smooth skin, tracing the swells and valleys of muscles, kneading and massaging with strong fingers._

_“Yeah, but … but we don’t have time for this! There’s too much to do! So much to prepare!”_

_“Of course, we have time,” Sebastian counters, his hands traveling paths they’ve blazed time and time again, searching for the one thing that will end this argument dead. “There’s always time for makin’ love, darling. Especially on a day like today - when the sun’s shinin’, the wind’s whistlin’ lullabies outside our window, and there’s no one around to interrupt …”_

_“Yes … oh, God, yes! I see your point … yes … yes … YES! No! No---mmm … mmm … Sebastian! You need to get that herd ready to move! We’re burning daylight we can’t afford!”_

_“Simon’s doing that,” Sebastian hums behind his husband’s ear. “Got an early start this mornin’. He’s excited about goin’ on this run.”_

_“Hmmm … he wants to make you proud.”_

_“Well, he already does that.” Sebastian strokes, taking his time feeling his husband’s cock, memorizing every ridge and vein. Seeing as they’ll be apart for close to a week, he needs this to sustain him. “And help’ll be here soon. They’ll have things handled till I get there. I don’t want the two of us to move from this spot until we absolutely have to.”_

_“And when is that, do you think?” Aaron shifts positions, rolling onto his stomach a hair to help Sebastian maneuver his way inside his body. Despite his arguing, he wants to be full of his husband for as long as he can have him before they have to say goodbye._

_“Maybe a couple of hours. Possibly more. We aren’t scheduled to move a head of that herd till dusk. I bet I can make you cum at least a dozen more times before then.”_

_“Only a dozen, Sebastian?” Aaron chuckles around a moan, bunching the blankets beneath him with his fists and rising to meet his husband, too desperate to wait. “Tsk-tsk-tsk. I think you’re losing your edge.”_

The sound of Aaron’s laughter echoes in Sebastian’s ears long after that memory drifts away, leaving behind a lump in his throat so massive, he’s sure it will choke him to death.

And he’d welcome it. Despite the things he hopes to accomplish with this life, he’d welcome death if it came to him.

A terrible thing to say considering the boy wrapped in his arms, and not only because of the attachment Sebastian knows Kurt has formed to him.

But because, for the time being, Sebastian is the only person Kurt has in the world.

Kurt had kept Sebastian’s dreams at bay for those first few nights, but now they’re back, and with a vengeance. And they don’t only show up when he’s asleep. They come for him when he’s awake – when Kurt nods off in the wagon and Sebastian’s mind wanders. Sebastian doesn’t have to close his eyes to relive those moments either. They’re not even so much dreams anymore, but a constant strip of events playing in his mind, like a reel spinning round and round and round without end. He’ll glance over at the sleeping boy in the wagon, and for a split second, he’ll see Aaron - wearing Sebastian’s hat and dressed in his son’s old clothes, which were really just hand-me-downs of Aaron’s after all.

And Sebastian has a feeling he knows why.

He _knows_ Kurt.

Somehow, he’s seen Kurt before.

Sebastian thought he was being sympathetic at first, having heard so many stories like Kurt’s, having seen so many people abused the way he’d been. But no. There’s something in his heart and in his mind that pulls toward him; as if, along with Aaron and his son, Kurt is a part of Sebastian’s unfinished business on this planet.

Suddenly, Sebastian wants nothing to do with Kennerstown, either. Whatever Kurt is afraid of there, Sebastian has a feeling it will bode ill for him, too. But he sees no way around it.

Not for what he has in mind.

Sebastian needs information, and Kennerstown is where he’ll most likely to get it.

And since he needs that information to complete his _unfinished business_ , Kennerstown is where they’ll have to go.

But he’ll need to stay extra vigilant. He’ll need to make certain that Kurt feels safe, and then follow through in ensuring that he stays that way.

Morning chores are performed in silence, heavy thoughts hanging between them left unspoken. Kurt hovers on the beveled edge of begging Sebastian not to take them to Kennerstown, of offering anything Sebastian wants, including himself bound in chains …

… or at the end of a whip.

He knows that Sebastian is too honorable a man to take him up on that, but there has to be something. Even the best of men have a weakness. But the only weakness Sebastian seems to have is his husband and his son, and to use either of them as a device to get what Kurt wants would be unforgivable. So much so that he’d considered running away, but he was certain there wasn’t anywhere he could get to on foot by sunrise that Sebastian couldn’t find him.

But what if Sebastian didn’t come looking for him at all?

Kurt didn’t want to risk finding out, not with the way he felt about Sebastian. He’d prefer Sebastian beat him purple than to find out he meant nothing to the man. Besides, running away is the action of a child, and Kurt had promised himself that he wouldn’t behave childishly and make Sebastian’s life difficult. Sebastian had offered him protection, and so far, he’s delivered. Kurt had to have faith that they could walk into the lion’s den and Sebastian would keep him safe.

 _Have faith_ , like in that book Sebastian gave him to read. Kurt doesn’t believe in God; not yet anyway. Nothing he has seen or read has convinced him that an all-powerful and benevolent creator exists somewhere in the heavens. But he believes in Sebastian. His words and actions thus far have proven the type of man he is. Kurt is inclined to believe what he can see, not what others tell him is real.

But men can change at the drop of a hat, and Sebastian is a man. But being around Sebastian had Kurt beginning to believe in a different variety of man. A man who can be kind and caring and loving without having a vicious bone in his body.

The type of man he remembered his father being.

The type of man he hoped to become.

They eat and pack up their camp without speaking, Sebastian’s green eyes distant even when Kurt stares straight at him, hoping to hear a word. Sebastian’s silence had started to make him nervous. A silence as thick as the one they shared is usually the precursor of rough times ahead. Had something changed? Had Kurt’s insistence that they camp one more night made Sebastian angry? He doesn’t think so. He didn’t think it would. Sebastian seemed so amenable to the idea.

But he won’t know until Sebastian opens his mouth and speaks. He can’t go by Sebastian’s eyes. The eyes are the windows of the soul, so-called, but they can betray. The tone of one’s voice, its rise and fall, its pitch and edge, are much harder to manipulate. Kurt doesn’t need to hear much. The man doesn’t have to make a speech or anything.

His name. That’s all he wants.

“So, are you ready to get a move on, little one?” Sebastian asks, and Kurt sighs, because even though his manner is weary, he doesn’t sound angry.

He doesn’t sound changed.

“I am,” Kurt says, making his way onto the buckboard, nearly leaping the distance. He’s no more eager to get to Kennerstown now than he had been last night, but he’s elated to still be traveling with Sebastian, that what he had done hadn’t thrown a wrench between them.

It never dawns on Kurt that Sebastian would even think to kiss him considering how distracted he seemed all morning, but he does.

And it’s no ordinary kiss.

Sebastian joins Kurt on the buckboard and, before the boy can take his seat, Sebastian winds an arm around his waist, pulls him close, and crashes their lips together, breathing him in with such ferocity, Kurt thinks they’ll eventually become one. With a hand to the back of Kurt’s head, Sebastian holds him steady, though if Kurt had any ideas of trying to escape Sebastian’s hold, they disappeared.

And that errant thought he had of running away? Completely disintegrated.

Kurt feels his knees go weak beneath him just as Sebastian decides to pull away, and Kurt’s brain starts crying: ‘ _Why!? Why now_? _Why in heaven’s name would you stop!?_ ’ But the wrinkle in Sebastian’s brow gives Kurt a hint.

“I … I hope that was okay,” he whispers against Kurt’s lips. “I hope that I didn’ frighten you or nuthin’.”

“No,” Kurt says with barely any breath. “No, that was … that was fine.” _Perfect_ , he thinks, but it doesn’t seem appropriate saying it. “In fact, if you want to keep doing that … w-we could stay here a little while longer? Get started after lunch … maybe?”

Sebastian smiles at Kurt – sweet, innocent Kurt – with so much experience and so little knowledge about life.

A delicate bird locked inside a gilded caged, but egregiously used.

Sebastian could kiss Kurt all day – drink every gasp from his lips, absorb every tremor from his body, savor the rise and fall of his chest against his own, speak only from one heart to another.

But that’s the stuff of dreams.

The dream he was reliving that morning, as a matter of fact.

 _Of course, we have time,_ Sebastian recalls saying _. There’s always time for makin’ love, darling. Especially on a day like today …_

It’s that very same type of day today – the sun shining high overhead, more warm than hot; the blue sky smudged by wispy clouds and touched with a slight breeze, swirling around them, doing its best to keep them twined together. It would be a perfect day for making love outdoors.

 _More_ than perfect.

Sebastian looks in Kurt’s eyes, so much like Aaron’s it makes his heart stutter. “I wish we could, little one. But …” Sebastian smirks, overwhelmed by thoughts of his husband and a tremendous sense of déjà vu “… we’re burnin’ daylight we can’t afford.”

“All … alright,” Kurt says. “I understand.” He has no right to feel disappointed. He knew it was a long shot. But as Kurt turns to take his seat, Sebastian takes his hand, keeping him tethered to this moment that he doesn’t want to lose.

It’s the closest he’s felt to his husband since that day making love at the ranch.

The last time he saw his husband alive.

“But soon,” he promises. “Alright?”

“Alright,” Kurt says, planting a small kiss to Sebastian’s lower lip before the man lets him go. “But I’m holding you to that.”

Sebastian watches his companion take a seat, spine tree-trunk straight; grab his hat and book, and get started reading as if that sassy remark he came out with was part of the norm.

More of the real Kurt released from his chains.

It’s not a complete turnaround, but it’s a step in the right direction.

“Lookin’ forward to it.”

***

“What in the world is goin’ on in that head of yours?”

“Hmm?” Kurt murmurs, answering the second time Sebastian asks, since he’d apparently missed the first.

“You’re thinking so hard over there, I’m beginning to smell smoke.”

Kurt hadn’t started out thinking. He’d started out reading, taking up Sebastian’s good book and opening it to the place he’d left off – a story about a king threatening to cut a baby in half.

The supposed son of two prostitutes.

If that didn’t sound like something the regent would do, Kurt didn’t know what did.

Except, in this story, the baby lived, and wasn’t made to suffer for his (real or fake) mother’s mistake, which wasn’t like the regent at all. At Sebastian’s question, he’s forced to blink his eyes thrice to get the rows of blurry print to pop back into place. He can’t even recall the last sentence he’d read.

It was the thought of a baby boy that had caused his mind to wander away from the page in the first place.

“I … I have a question, but I … I don’t know if it’s my place to ask.”

Sebastian pulls himself up straight, fidgeting with the reins. “Considerin’ all the liberties I’ve taken, I don’t think there’s anythin’ you don’t have the right to know.”

Kurt closes the book, his index finger lingering beneath the cover, where all of the information he wants _might_ be written. But it would feel like breaking a confidence to go looking. Besides, he’d rather hear it from Sebastian himself. “I was hoping you’d tell me … I mean, I wanted to know more about … your son.”

Sebastian grinds his teeth together. He was prepared to field questions about his husband, but for some reason, not his son. “What about my son?”

“What was his name, for one thing? And …” Kurt scoots nervously on the bench “… who was his father? By blood, I mean. Was it you? O-or Aaron?”

“Simon. His name was Simon,” Sebastian replies, swallowing hard to keep his voice steady. “And he was mine, flesh and blood.”

“How … did that work … if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I don’t mind,” Sebastian lies, girding himself to cut to the chase. “There was a girl in our village - a sex slave. She belonged to a local lord – an older, kinder, more civil man than most. Anyway, she didn’t do well in his household, didn’t like staying indoors. She started hurting herself on purpose, so he found her a place at one of the mercantiles. She worked the counter doing normal, everyday stuff, but she still turned tricks on the side, so to speak. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s all she’d known. Maybe because it made her feel normal. I … I don’t know.” He glances sheepishly at Kurt. “I … I don’t mean to speak for her … or you.”

“That’s alright.” Kurt shrugs. “You might be right. I can’t speak for her, either.”

“My father arranged it. He didn’t have anything against me liking men, and he loved Aaron. Loved him like a son. But he didn’t feel a man was truly a man till he slept with a woman. A lot of men felt that way. He made me a deal, said I could have the ranch, I could have my inheritance early so I could marry Aaron, if I … if I lost my virginity to her.”

Kurt watches Sebastian settle into those words, wrapping the reins so tightly around his hands that Kurt can feel them cutting in to his own skin.

“Had you … _been_ with Aaron yet?”

“Nah.” Sebastian snaps the reins lightly, speeding his horse along as if trying to outrun the truth. “He wanted to wait till our wedding night, and so did I.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Not really,” he lies again. “I mean, it was what it was. It counted to my father, but not to me. And not to Aaron …” Or so Sebastian had hoped. Aaron never gave him a clear answer on that account. For the most part, he’s sure Aaron didn’t want to think about it.

“And … how was it? I mean, what was it like?”

“You never been with a woman?” Sebastian asks, slightly surprised.

“No,” Kurt admits, feeling suddenly small in Sebastian’s eyes.

“Well, it’s different, I’ll tell you that. Man, I was so terrified! I couldn’t keep it up!” He follows that with a humorless laugh until he notices Kurt shrinking in his seat. “Is this uncomfortable for you to hear?”

“No.” Kurt shakes his head. “Not at all. I find it sort of … interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know my father kind of suspected that I was … th-that I would turn out … you know … the way I turned out.”

“Gay?” Sebastian supplies.

“Yes. _Gay_ ,” Kurt repeats quickly, getting it over and done with. It’s a difficult word for him to say, Sebastian can tell. He says it like a curse, like something he might have gotten hit for uttering. “But back in my village, there wasn’t a name for it, and to be quite honest, I didn’t really know. Or at least, it wasn’t the kind of thing I would have needed to know at the time. I was a child, who didn’t have romantic feelings for anyone, except …” Kurt sighs. Sebastian watches him from the corner of his eye, trying to sort through his thoughts. “It’s just interesting to see how _your_ father felt as opposed to how _my_ father felt. It seems so very different. I don’t know which I would choose, to tell you the truth. They both seem cruel in their own ways.”

“Yeah. I get you.” Sebastian understands. Even though he got Simon out of it, and Aaron in the end, it still seemed unnecessary. And unfair. He can say _it didn’t count_ all he wants, but the truth is it had always felt like being unfaithful. And even though Aaron didn’t hold it against him, Sebastian never forgave himself for not finding a better way.

Of course, hindsight is twenty-twenty. As a young man with nothing to his name except the things his father would bequeath him, he could see no other way.

“Where is she now?” Kurt asks quietly, almost hoping that Sebastian wouldn’t hear. “Simon’s mother, I mean. Whatever happened to her?”

Sebastian barely deliberates on his answer before he gives it. “Don’t know. She left our village soon after she gave birth to Simon. We never heard from her again.”

“Did she leave because of Simon? Or because of you?” Kurt suspects, though he knows nothing of this woman or her circumstances, that it could likely be the latter, since Sebastian is a man one can easily become attached to, especially if he showed her the same kindness he’s shown Kurt.

“Possibly. I try not to think about it. Like a lot of things from my past.”

“Yeah.” Kurt returns to the book, but doesn’t open it. He’s had enough of stories for the time being. “I get you.”

***

They hear Kennerstown before they see it, then smell it soon after – the sharp mixture of horse dung, wood fire smoke, and sweat that condensed, isolated townships often effuse. Men on horseback pass them by, nodding and tipping their hats as they hurry on ahead, paying them the briefest of minds. With each new face that passes, Kurt becomes stiffer and stiffer, eyes pointed dead ahead, on the lookout for danger. But as they close in on the gates of town, Kurt’s gaze is locked, Sebastian realizes, on what they’re quickly approaching - a set of stocks constructed smack dab in the center of the square. As those stocks come into clearer view, Sebastian feels Kurt’s hand tremble beside his thigh.

He shoots Kurt a glance. The boy is shaking, so much so that his hat has started to creep down his brow. He recoils in his seat, much like he did the night before, about ready to vault over the bench and into the bed of the buckboard – possibly even over the side and back down the road they came.  

 _That’s_ the reason Kurt didn’t want to come here. _That’s_ what he’s trying to avoid.

Something happened to Kurt in Kennerstown. Something _unthinkable_. Something he’s probably shoved so deep down, he can’t put it into words.

While they have a few moments of anonymity, Sebastian puts his hand over Kurt’s and squeezes.

“I’ll keep you safe, darling,” he says. “I promise. I won’t let anyone here hurt you.”

Kurt nods, but whether or not the boy believes him, Sebastian can’t tell. He can’t even see if he’s still breathing. But he has no time to check. Before Sebastian’s rig reaches the first building on the main road, a man steps down and approaches. He puts out a hand as if he means to grab the bridle on Sebastian’s horse, but Sebastian pulls his horse up short and stops.

The man sneers, but drops his hand.

“Hello, stranger,” he says. “What be your business here?”

“Just passin’ through,” Sebastian replies.  

“Are ye fixin’ to stay the night?”

“That I am. Does this town have a vermin problem?” Sebastian gestures towards the stocks. “I don’t think I’ve seen one of those in a dog’s age, except in some of the more lawless towns out West.”

He’s changing the subject, directing the man’s attention away from them, but he’s also hoping that whatever answer the man gives will ease Kurt’s mind. Most towns that Sebastian travels to don’t use public stocks anymore. Folks tend to handle their issues privately. Sebastian hasn’t been through Kennerstown in a few years, but in that time, he can’t remember seeing those stocks in use.

The man turns his head for a look.

“Nah,” he says, an unsavory smile curling his mouth. “Haven’t used those in a while. Just keep ‘em here as a warnin’. You know, to horse thieves, and, uh … unruly slaves.” He turns his eyes and his smile on Kurt. "He your slave?"

“No. He’s my son,” Sebastian replies, pulling himself up proud.

“A-ha,” the man says, unconvinced. “Yer, uh, _son_ have a name?”

Sebastian nods. “I call him Aaron."

It takes everything Kurt has not to jerk his head up in surprise. He’d expected Sebastian to say _Simon_. From the look on Sebastian’s face, his oh-so-subtle eye pop, Kurt suspects that that’s what Sebastian had planned on. Sebastian doesn’t correct himself. He can’t. If they’re going to make it in this town without incident, Kurt would now be called _Aaron_ … like Sebastian’s late husband.

“And where’s the boy’s mother?”

“Dead. Killed by undesirables a while back.” He bows his head and tips his hat. “May she rest in peace.”

Kurt does the same, hiding the tears in his eyes.

The man stares at Kurt, glancing between him and Sebastian, probably trying to make out a resemblance. And there _are_ several. Kurt and Sebastian have a similar shape and structure to their noses, their brows, their cheekbones. Their hair color is close, and they both have light eyes. But those are generalities. Still, Kurt’s not sure exactly how deep this man’s looking. It may be that he’s attempting to unnerve Sebastian into admitting more than he has. But Sebastian isn’t an amateur. He knows not to give anything away.

If you act like you don’t have anything to hide, people will believe it.

“Alright then.” The man steps back to let them pass. “Enjoy yer visit.”

“Thank ya kindly.” Sebastian clicks to his horse and the beast begins to walk, the buckboard lumbering forward and taking Kurt’s stomach with it.

“Now, you gentlemen behave yerselves, ye hear?” the man calls as Sebastian steers them further in. “We wouldn’ wanna have to use those stocks tonight, if you catch my meaning!”

Sebastian doesn’t respond, leaving the man to howl at his own joke as he leads his horse by the stores and saloons that would be seen as traps to those who know their way around … which Sebastian does.

“You can breathe now, little one,” Sebastian teases, though he himself remains on high alert. Getting past one sentry doesn’t put them in the clear yet.

They won’t be that until they have their backs to this town, far enough away that they can’t see its silhouette on the horizon.

They don’t stop at the first inn on the road, nor the last, but find a place in the middle, separated on both sides by a fairly wide alley leading to the stables beyond. As with Carole’s inn, he seems to know the proprietors of this place well, though not as cordially. He knows what room he wants, and the man at the front desk gives it to them without argument.

It’s a slightly larger room than the one they stayed in last, but not as homey. Not as bright. Sebastian stables his horse while Kurt quickly unpacks the buckboard. Sebastian double-checks Kurt’s work when he’s done to be sure he left not a scrap behind, nothing that might tell lookie-loos who they are, where they’re going, or what they have.

“Best not to pique anyone’s curiosity,” Sebastian remarks, sliding their trunks and bags into the far corner of the room. “Don’t need anyone asking questions that don’t need answering. But I, on the other hand, have a few questions that need answerin’. So Imma have to leave you alone for a little while. I recommend you stay inside. People get very suspicious of strangers in this town.”

“Are you sure we fooled him?” Kurt’s eyes dart anxiously in the direction of the door, expecting the man from outside to burst in any second and drag him out. Not Sebastian. Just him. “You … you don’t think he suspects …?”

“That man don’t know nothin’, darling,” Sebastian says, resting his hands on Kurt’s shoulders. “He’s a deputy in this town, and he’s paid to be suspicious. He could see God himself pulling you from my rib like Adam did with Eve and he’d _still_ think we were up to something.”

“But … why? Why be suspicious of _everyone_?”

Sebastian smiles at Kurt’s naiveté. He puts a hand to the boy’s cheek, caresses his soft skin with his rough palm, then reaches for his coat. “That’s how they keep the law in this town. Kennerstown is a gateway of sorts. People from beyond our borders have to pass through here to get to larger townships inland.” Sebastian shrugs on his coat, puts on his hat. He leans in to Kurt, crooks a finger beneath his chin, tilts his head up, and gives him a gentle kiss on the lips. “Just lay low and sit tight. I’ll try not to be too long.” He follows with a kiss on Kurt’s forehead before he heads out the door, and Kurt locks it behind him. Kurt stands with his ear to the seam, listening to Sebastian’s muffled footsteps retreat down the dusty hallway. He listens till there’s no sound left, and when he’s gone, Kurt feels more alone than he has in a while.

He looks at their room, lit only by the dim glow of sun seeping in through cracks around the shuttered windows, their things stacked in a pile on one side, and finds himself longing for the buckboard - for the sun on his face and the wind in his hair, eating dinner over an open fire and camping under the stars. After that first night in Sebastian’s rented room, Kurt never wanted to sleep outside again. He’d had his fill of the outdoors – of being dirty and sun burnt, starved and exhausted, filling his body with whatever filthy water and rotting remnants he stumbled across, which did nothing to keep his mouth from drying out or his stomach from rumbling.

He can do without the starvation, of course, but the smell of fresh air, feeling unrestrained and free – he’d trade a lifetime in the finest rooms in any township for that in a blink.

How strange the past few days have been. How quickly things had begun to change for him.

With a lack of anything better to do until Sebastian returns, Kurt starts to tidy up, not that the room needs much in the way of tidying. There’s only one bed, one table, a dirt floor he can do nothing about, and two chairs. He goes through the trunk of clothes, separating out dirty pants and shirts, and setting them aside to wash. He then selects which of the jarred foods and dried meat they should have for supper. It’s calming, organizing their gear, preparing for the evening. He’d like to find some fresh flowers to dress the small, wobbly wood table, since the ones from the day before are looking a bit past their prime, but he doesn’t dare go outside. He makes due by giving the ones they have more water in the hopes that they’ll spring back to life. Then he wets a rag and gives the table a good wipe down, wondering what it would be like to keep house for Sebastian.

Maybe raise a child with him.

Kurt hadn’t given too much thought to having children considering, but now, he can see himself having a son, as long as he had a man like Sebastian to raise him with. He couldn’t see having one off a sex slave the way Sebastian did. That shouldn’t bother him, but it does. He knows that he himself probably couldn’t manage having sex with a woman, so that task would fall on Sebastian again, and that thought burns him – not just for Sebastian’s sake, but his own as well, and for dozens of reasons he should feel ashamed to admit to. According to that book he’s been reading, he thinks that makes him a “hypocrite”. He’s not sure. He doesn’t quite understand what that word means, but it seems to fit.

But, for the moment, he doesn’t care, even if being a hypocrite means he won’t get to enter the magical fruit garden or what have you after death.

Maybe they could _adopt_ a boy - find someone on the road the way Sebastian found him, possibly even a slave like him. Though why he’s even entertaining the idea, he hasn’t a clue. Sebastian isn’t his. They haven’t even known one another but a few days. Kurt remembers that boy at the regent’s house, devastated at being left behind. Kurt refuses to end up that way. He’s not going to let himself get so attached to Sebastian that he’ll be destroyed when the man goes. Regardless of what they do together, or how Kurt feels, Kurt is a slave Sebastian picked up on the road, and that’s all. Sebastian is taking Kurt to his father, back to where he belongs. Then Sebastian will be on his way. End of story.

Their parting is inevitable, so Kurt had best remember that.

But, for the meantime, they’re together. Kurt may not have Sebastian’s heart, but he has him to hold, to talk to, to share a bed with …

… to kiss.

As the sun starts peeking down below the horizon, Kurt decides he’ll have his hand at getting supper ready, try to make their room feel like a home for one night. He straightens the sheets on the thin mattress, fluffs the pillows, and lays out some clean clothes for Sebastian’s return. He fishes out a washing cloth, imagining Sebastian will order up a bath after his long afternoon out and about.

He chews his lower lip, fighting a smile as he ponders the chances that maybe they can share it together this time.


	8. Chapter 8

Sitting alone in a room in Kennerstown isn’t as difficult as Kurt thought it would be.

Not for the reasons he originally feared, anyway.

Lonely as he is, bored as he feels, the ghosts of his past haven’t come to haunt him here. Being surrounded by Sebastian’s things, marked by Sebastian’s kisses, may have given him armor against their power. Of course, they could have chosen to linger in the hallway and wait for him to step foot outside before they attack.

Or maybe he’s outgrown his fears. As horrible as what happened to him here was, he’d learned soon after that there are worse places than Kennerstown, worse people than those who’d been employed to bring him here.

Worse punishments than those he had endured shackled in that town square.

Otherwise, his memories leave him alone.

Rain begins to fall as the sun sets, its _thunk-thunk-thunking_ on the windowsill making Kurt restless. Rain could slow Sebastian up. If it comes down any harder, it could force him to duck into a saloon to dry off. He might grab dinner while he’s there, order up a drink or two, lose track of time.

Kurt doesn’t rightly know whether Sebastian likes his drink or not. They’ve only drunk milk and water thus far. But if he drinks too much after a long, exhausting day, he might pass out, and then …

 _No,_ Kurt scolds himself for the fifteenth time that day. _Stop_. _That’s not going to happen_. Sebastian will come back when he’s done, like he promised, if not to keep his word, and if not for Kurt, then because Kurt looks like Aaron. And Sebastian would want to return to the one person who looks like his beloved husband.

Sadly, that’s Kurt’s insurance policy.

But it doesn’t make the time go by any quicker, and it doesn’t make Sebastian any swifter. Kurt hates himself for growing impatient, but he’s been anticipating Sebastian’s return since night fall, quiet as a mouse so he can discern the sound of Sebastian’s horse trotting down the street, or his footsteps in the hall. Several times he heard steps he thought might be Sebastian’s. His heart raced. He held his breath, eager to give the man a proper homecoming. But they’d walk on, leaving Kurt to recover in frustration.

He tried napping to make the time go by, but his thoughts were filled with Sebastian, his body stirring in ways he wasn’t ready to confront. Back at the regent’s house, Kurt cherished his times alone, for they were so few and far between. He knew how to occupy himself with sewing and with singing, even with just his thoughts, getting lost in daydreams of reuniting with his father.

But, as Sebastian is so fond of saying, this isn’t the regent’s house.

This time, Kurt has something other than servicing men to look forward to, and he’d like to get back to it as soon as possible.

The upcoming days promised to be torturous if Kurt couldn’t stand one or two alone.

After pacing an honest-to-God rut in the floor, Kurt stretches out on the bed, book open in front of him, giving reading a go. But the darkness inside the room rivals the darkness outside, and the candles he lit do little more to relieve the darkness than toss shadows in inconvenient places. He doesn’t know the time other than it’s past dinner. When the ruckus from the bars and the saloons begins to rise over the sound of the falling rain, he frets. With Sebastian in his every thought, he recalls that bruise on his jaw, the one that looked like it could have come from a rock his horse kicked up.

Or a fist.

What if whoever gave him that bruise tracked them down and found him?

And what of those bruises on his back? The ones that looked like belt marks? Those could be from the regent’s men. Sebastian _did_ say when they first met that he didn’t need any trouble from the regent. Could those bruises have something to do with that remark?

What if Sebastian lay in a ditch? Or tied in the back of a cart, on the way to Lord knows where?

What if he’s on his way to the _regent’s house_??

That thought is strong enough to get Kurt up off the bed, ready to race out into the weather in search of his benefactor, when someone stomps down the hallway with purpose towards the room. Kurt eyes the door, straining as if he can see who’s on the other side. He half expects whoever it is to walk on by like the dozens before, but the footsteps stop and the doorknob rattles. Kurt swallows a breath. He had locked the door after Sebastian left, but he didn’t put too much faith in the lock. A few good shoulders to the wood could force the door open, and then …

But whomever stands on the other side stops trying the knob and knocks.

“Kurt?” _Knock-knock_. “Kurt, darling? Can you hear me?” _Knock-knock_. “Open the door.”

Kurt bolts off the bed, landing a foot away. “Coming! Coming!” he calls, and in three short strides, he unlocks the door.

“You’re back!” He says, opening it wide and offering his arms for Sebastian’s hat and coat. Sebastian hands them over, grinning sadly at Kurt’s willingness to please. Whether from conditioning or loneliness is anyone’s guess, but Sebastian could be blamed for one of those. Relieved of his coat, he shivers, sending drops of water spraying all over, darkening the ground.

“I am,” Sebastian replies, beating the cold from his arms and legs. “Did you miss me, little one?”

“I did,” Kurt admits shamelessly, too happy to see Sebastian to hide his regard. And why should he? Why should he keep that fact to himself?

“I see you found the candles.” Sebastian peers at the points of light blinking at him from every corner of the room. Part of him wishes Kurt had just left the room dark. After coming in from outside, the tiny halos circling each flame mess with Sebastian’s night vision. But Kurt couldn’t have known, so he’s not going to mention it.

“Yeah.” Kurt giggles. “I may have overdone it a little, but it was so dark in here! I thought I would read until you got back, but I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face!” Kurt looks from the mass of candles to the blank expression on Sebastian’s face and suddenly realizes the mistake he’d made. Maybe candles are expensive. They’d had so many of them at the regent’s house, price had never crossed his mind. But perhaps they cost Sebastian dearly. And now, in his ignorance, Kurt had wasted Sebastian’s supply. “I---I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t think …”

“Not at all.” Sebastian places a hand to Kurt’s cheek and a kiss to his forehead, his lips frigid against Kurt’s skin. “I _want_ you to see. Can’t read in the dark, can ya?” Sebastian performs another once over of the room in the hopes his eyes will adjust and catches sight of the table. It’s been dressed for the evening meal – table cloth, plates, silverware, mugs, and their pathetic bouquet in its clouded jar. Except, on second inspection, Sebastian notices that Kurt’s plate is dirty, smeared with gravy, his fork lying over it. Empty and unclean, in the manner of any boy his age. Sebastian’s new smile clears the sadness from his eyes. “And you ate,” he declares, “ _before_ I got here?”

Kurt’s face pales, his _welcome home_ smile less bright. “I---I got hungry, and I figured you wouldn’t mind, seeing as you said all those times …”

“I don’t mind. Not at all. In fact, I’m proud of you.” Sebastian takes Kurt in his arms, folding him against skin that’s cool and damp. Kurt breathes in deep at Sebastian’s neck, this one juncture fresh beneath his nose. Not just rain water fresh, but soap and water fresh.

“You … you already took a bath?” Kurt’s body stiffens with disappointment and embarrassment. But really, what had he expected?

“Not really. It was more of a quick dunk under a faucet drippin’ cold water. They don’t have much in the way of bathing facilities here.”

“Oh.” Kurt stares forlornly at the floor.

“But I ordered up your water heated.” Sebastian motions to a bucket by the door that Kurt didn’t see before. “It’s come right off the fire, so it might be too hot to use at the moment. But I don’t need you catchin’ your death,” he adds during Kurt’s silence. “This room’s goin’ to get cold tonight, even with us bedding down together.”

Kurt nods, eyes plastered to the steaming bucket. “Thank you. That was … very kind of you.” He clears his throat of his own stupidity. “You should … you should eat.” He walks to the table and pulls out a chair for Sebastian, preparing to bathe in the far corner of the room while Sebastian eats … _alone_. Kurt chides himself for his silliness, but if Sebastian knew what he’d built up in his head, he would be kind. He would call it _adjusting_ , which seems to Kurt just an empty word to describe the ways his mind and body are flailing through life, trying freedom and adulthood on for size, and failing miserably. “I’m sure you must be starving after your business today. You’ve been gone for _hours_.”

Sebastian watches Kurt recoil, his smile gone, his eyes focused on the dusty floor as if the secrets of the universe had been etched there. Unwittingly, Sebastian had done this – lifted him up, then knocked him down, simply by misunderstanding. The more his gaze sweeps the room, the more his eyes become comfortable with the low light, and the more he begins to understand what Kurt had been doing during the long day.

He’d been keeping house, making things tidy and homey.

For _Sebastian_.

On Sebastian’s end, he’d found himself rushing back to town to be with Kurt, and not simply because he knew Kurt was alone in a town he hated.

Sebastian wanted to _be_ with Kurt – a revelation that shook him at his core. Normally it was his dreams of _Aaron_ he’d be rushing back to.

But he hadn’t thought of his husband much that afternoon, and for that, he felt ashamed.

“You know, I can’t say I’m all that hungry.” Sebastian reaches behind him and secures the door. “For food, anyways.”

Shrouded in darkness, Kurt bites his lower lip. He had imagined Sebastian saying something similar to him in his dreams this afternoon. He doesn’t know what to expect, but the fluttering of butterflies in his stomach give him some ideas. “What _are_ you hungry for?”

“It may sound strange, but I haven’t had a proper shave in a while. I’m all butter fingers when I try to do it myself. And I was hoping … you don’t look like you shave yourself, but could you possibly …”

Kurt pulls a face. He didn’t see _that_ coming. “… give you a shave?”

“I don’t feel right askin’, to be honest. I wouldn’t want you to wait on me or nuthin’, but …”

“No!” Kurt turns with hands up to stop Sebastian from repealing his request. “I would _love_ to!”

“It’s actually more of a trade.”

“What do you want to trade?”

“You give me a shave …” Sebastian takes a step closer, the pupils of his eyes blown blacker than the room they’re in “… and I’ll wash your back. When that water cools down, that is.”

Kurt shoots a look at the bucket of water, willing it to cool enough for Sebastian to make good on his end of the deal. But from the volume of water in the bucket, it may take a while.

Long enough to give the man his shave.

“Deal,” Kurt says, relocating the chair beneath his hands away from the table to give him room while Sebastian roots through his trunk for his razor, washing cloth, and bar of soap. He finds them, then moves the bucket of hot water closer. He sits in the chair and makes himself comfortable. He dips the washing cloth into the bucket, then wrings it out over the ground. Kurt watches in awe at how Sebastian handles the hot water, like it’s no big thing. Then again, if he’s come in from the cold rain, and then a cold shower, it probably feels regular temperature to him. Sebastian unravels the wet cloth, leans his head back, and puts it on his face, sighing beneath its warmth.

“Ready when you are,” he mutters sleepily, and Kurt prays the man doesn’t fall asleep before his shave is done.

Kurt uses the mug on the table to scoop water from the bucket. No need making the whole thing a soapy mess when he only needs a little. He drops the bar of soap in the mug so it can get soft. Using Sebastian’s washing cloth, Kurt agitates the soap in the water to build a lather suitable for a shave. Then he pats the soap over Sebastian’s chin, from beneath his nose down to his neck, covering every inch of skin with foam.

“Now don’t slice my throat or nuthin’,” Sebastian teases.

“Then, try not to sneeze.”

Kurt waits until Sebastian stops laughing, then touches the blade to his skin. Sebastian goes still, but not nervously. Peacefully. Sebastian trusts Kurt to do this for him.

Or, it could be, he doesn’t much care if Kurt cuts his throat or not.

Kurt gives himself a mental slap for entertaining such a morbid thought.

Kurt stands behind Sebastian and starts at his throat, but only to get it over with since, as skilled as he is with a razor, it makes him anxious. At the regent’s house, men would try to trip him up, because nicking one of the masters meant they’d earn the right to punish him. And punishing the regent’s favorite was more sought after for some than fucking him, though the two could end up being one and the same.

Swipe by swipe, Kurt runs the razor over Sebastian’s skin, rinsing the hairs from the blade in the mug of soapy water. When the stubble on Sebastian’s neck has been shaved clean, Kurt moves to his jaw. He becomes distracted by Sebastian’s humming beneath his fingers wielding the blade, surprisingly sharp considering Sebastian didn’t give Kurt a strip of leather to sharpen it on. It seems odd that a man who has avoided giving himself a shave for this long keeps his razor ready-sharp.

Unless he intended on using it for something other than giving himself a shave.

Kurt slaps himself again for coming up with another ludicrous idea. Where are they all coming from? He trusts Sebastian, more than anyone he’s ever met. So why would his mind devise so many conspiracies about him?

The answer to that is simple - Kurt still doesn’t know that much about him. So much of the man remains a mystery.

Case in point …

“What’s this?” Kurt asks, fingertips tracing the outline of a fresh bruise layered over the earlier one – the one Kurt had felt no need to pry about. But this new one is vividly purple, a painful-looking split in the skin, oozing blood. Had the light in the room been better, Kurt would have seen it straight away.

“It’s the unfortunate consequence of searching for something that people don’t want to give you.” Sebastian rolls his head, removing the wound from view. He turns into Kurt’s hand and kisses his fingertips, attempting to seduce away his curiosity.

“And what’s that?”

“Information, darling. That’s all.”

“Well … _what_ information?”

Sebastian sighs in defeat once he realizes no amount of kisses will quench Kurt’s curiosity. Sebastian can’t fault him. Besides, _he_ was the one who said there wasn’t a thing that Kurt didn’t have permission to ask. “I’m looking for the men who killed my husband and my boy.”

Kurt has to stop his hand from slipping when he hears that. “And what will you do when you find them?”

“Don’t you worry your head about that. I promised to keep you safe, and I’m a-holdin’ to that.”

“I’m not worried about me,” Kurt says, going back over his chin and upper lip, cleaning up the strays. “I’m worried about _you_.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, little one,” Sebastian mumbles. “I’ve been doing this for a while now. I know my way around a fight.”

Kurt sets the razor on the table. For lack of a dry cloth, he takes off his own shirt and pats Sebastian’s chin. The man’s head remains tilted over the back of the chair, eyes closed like he could be asleep.

 _Probably is asleep_ , Kurt reckons. _And he deserves it too, the poor man._ Kurt decides he won’t feel vexed if Sebastian doesn’t stay awake to wash his back. He knows he’ll make it up to him. But Kurt has no idea how he’s going to get the man, fully dressed from shirt to shoes, over to the bed. It’s only a few feet, but there’s no way Kurt can lift him. He’ll have to rouse him, but best to do it gently. Kurt bends over him and kisses him softly on the lips, resolved not to feel too heartbroken when he hears the name _Aaron_ whispered against his mouth.

Sebastian responds to Kurt’s kiss the second their lips touch. He grabs Kurt’s right leg behind the knee and pulls, maneuvering it over his lap and directing Kurt down into it. Kurt smiles, seated with Sebastian’s hands holding his hips. “I thought you’d fallen asleep.”

“Hmm, not at all. I was just relaxing. But now, it’s _your_ turn.”

The sound of water splashing in the bucket accompanies the movement of Sebastian’s hand as he rinses the washing cloth. Kurt hands him the soap from the mug and Sebastian lathers it up. He scrubs Kurt’s back in small circles, using less pressure over his mark when he reaches his shoulder. Kurt sinks into Sebastian’s lap as he washes, going from sitting rigidly straight to melting against his chest, arms looped around his neck, wishing this would never end. How is it that this feels so much more intimate than sleeping together? So much more than the kisses they’ve shared? It falls along the lines of Sebastian’s daily ritual of covering Kurt’s burn with ointment and praying over it. It’s selfless affection. It’s concern for someone’s well-being.

It’s the opposite of being used.

Just when Kurt thinks it’s over, when Sebastian rinses the cloth of soap and drips clean water down Kurt’s back, he moves to Kurt’s front, wiping down his chest. Kurt lifts his chin and lengthens his neck, exposing as much skin as he can to Sebastian’s caresses. It’s such a decadent sensation, being bathed like this. He’s done it for other men, but never once has anyone returned the favor. There wasn’t a single man he could remember meeting that he’d secretly hoped would do this for him.

And he’d never dared to dream that he would find someone he would.

Those stirrings from his attempted nap earlier return with a vengeance. Before he can think of a way to stop them, they take over, but this time, he doesn’t mind as much. He knows Sebastian will not punish him for them. He feels free here, and he wants to embrace that feeling.

“Here.” Sebastian hands Kurt the washing cloth when he finishes his chest. “So you can do the rest.”

Kurt takes it, holds it, stares down at it with contemplation in his eyes.

“Kurt?” Sebastian asks, curious what’s going on behind those stormy blues, piercing and unblinking. He doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t push Kurt away. Something about the way he’s sitting – arms and legs tensed, head bowed, lips parted – has Sebastian chomping at the bit to know what’s on his mind.

Kurt releases a breath that sounds like a decision. With shaking fingers, Kurt crumples the washing cloth inside Sebastian’s hand and pushes it away.

“D--do you mind doing my legs?” he asks, guiding the tip of Sebastian’s index finger beneath the waistband of his pants. “I mean, since I’m here and all …”

Kurt meets Sebastian’s eyes. If Kurt’s blue eyes are the turbulent sky, Sebastian’s green eyes are the quaking earth. Kurt feels Sebastian’s heart pounding in his chest, tapping a rhythm alongside his. Sebastian licks his lips once. His breathing skips. He swallows hard, and then he says, “No.”

Kurt’s head falls. Asking for that was the boldest thing he’s ever done, including the times he’d defied the masters. He’d taken a risk, stepped outside his comfort zone, and he failed. There’s no disgrace in failure. He thinks Sebastian would tell him that.

That doesn’t make it any less humiliating.

Sebastian’s finger beneath his chin brings Kurt’s eyes up to meet his again. “No, little one. I mean, no, I don’t mind. But I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.” Sebastian reaches down Kurt’s left pant leg, seeming to ignore the erection that springs free from Kurt’s pants when he lowers his waistband.

Kurt tenses at the first accidental brush of Sebastian’s forearm against his cock. He was nervous that Sebastian’s touch would bring with it bad memories. Or even worse – it would feel like being bathed by his father, which would be confusing and unsettling on several unspeakable levels. But Sebastian’s skin against his feels so comfortable, so familiar.

This is what physical affection is _supposed_ to feel like – a _want_ to, not a have to.

Giving grace, not taking away pieces of your soul.

“I won’t touch you where you don’t want to be touched,” Sebastian says, switching to the next leg.

The words of a gentleman, unwilling to push Kurt beyond his boundaries. But Kurt _wants_ them to be pushed. Those boundaries _need_ to be pushed. They were constructed by people who were not him. He should get the choice as to when and how they get broken down. And where better than in this place of safety – sitting in the lap of the first man who’s ever treated him like an equal and not an object?

Kurt rests his forehead against Sebastian’s shoulder as Sebastian slides the washing cloth over Kurt’s thigh, scrubbing as much of his backside as he can reach. By the time he brings it back around, Kurt is so hard, a single breeze against his cock, swollen blood red and bobbing against his abs, is nearly the end of him.

Sebastian’s hand remains, torn as to what he should do. Does he want to make Kurt cum? Want to feel him fall apart straddling his lap? Absolutely. Would it be the _right_ thing to do? Would it be taking advantage of a vulnerable, abused young man? He doesn’t know.

It could be that it’s not really up to _him_ to decide.

He’s willing. Lord knows he’s willing. But how would Kurt take the proposition? Would he feel badly about himself afterward, the way he did that morning he woke up, unable to control his body? Would Kurt fear him? See him like one of the masters at the regent’s house, wanting him for only his body? Would he feel the need to reciprocate, even if Sebastian doesn’t ask for anything in return?

“What do you want, little one?” Sebastian asks, his hand retreating as he gauges Kurt’s reaction. Kurt doesn’t look up. He’s not staring at anything; he’s lost inside his own mind, weighing the parameters of good and bad, can and can’t, should and shouldn’t, for himself. Sebastian’s hand is nearly at his side when Kurt’s fingers wrap around his wrist, pulling his hand back to his lap.

“P-please?” he stutters, the cheek pressed against Sebastian’s chin burning with desire, and a bit of fear. “Please …” he repeats with no explanation, possibly because he doesn’t know what he himself is asking for.

“Do you want _this_?” Sebastian wraps his fingers around Kurt’s cock with the cloth in between. He simply holds, waiting to see what Kurt intends to do, but when Kurt doesn’t move, when his breathing begins to pick up pace and his body shudders, Sebastian figures he’s wrestling with himself, fighting to break free of the barriers he’s been forced behind for so long.

He’s gone this far, met Sebastian half way. Sebastian can assume the rest for himself.

“Like this?” he whispers, stroking slowly.

Kurt’s voice cracks, and he buries his face in the crook of Sebastian’s neck. “Yes … yes, _please_ …”

Sebastian hears his husband’s voice in the gasp that escapes Kurt’s lips. The first time Sebastian did this for Aaron was the thrill of his lifetime - holding him close, giving him pleasure, the joy and the ecstasy contained within his surrender, a surrender he gave to Sebastian willingly. They fell in love young, close to thirteen, but they were around Kurt’s age when they began to do this – explore each other’s bodies, experiment with touch. They waited for marriage to have sex, but up till then, everything else was pretty much fair game. The urge to ask Kurt to show his face teeters on the tip of Sebastian’s tongue, but he knows it wouldn’t be right. He’d only use the sight of Kurt writhing in his arms as another way to mourn Aaron when he should be celebrating Kurt.

This moment belongs to Kurt, not him, and not his dead husband.

Kurt’s whimpers into Sebastian’s neck, high-pitched and muffled, do their best not to be heard. Sebastian abandons the cloth so he can feel Kurt against his palm, the silkiness of Kurt’s skin, the throbbing of a member not his own for once. Skin against skin is the lynchpin that deconstructs the last of Kurt’s inhibitions. His arms wrap around Sebastian’s shoulders, gripping until it almost hurts. His thighs lock down so tight around Sebastian’s legs that it’s all Sebastian can do not to beg Kurt to ride him. But Sebastian is purposefully keeping that part of himself at rest. Sebastian doesn’t know if, even after this, he’s willing to take that step with Kurt.

For the sake of both their sanities.

When Kurt’s whimpers end and his body stills, Sebastian retrieves the washing cloth from the bucket and wipes away the mess. They sit in darkness, Kurt curled in Sebastian’s arms, his breath evening out till Sebastian has to prick up his ears to hear it. Kurt doesn’t rise, but Sebastian can feel him thinking, latched tight to his shoulders, his fingers like iron.

“I … may have done more than wash your back, little one,” Sebastian says, carefully pulling Kurt’s pants up to his waist.

“I---I know,” Kurt says, though the words barely come out past the lump in his throat. “And I … I thank you.”

The heavy gulp that follows leaves Sebastian with doubts. Is that what he was made to say at the regent’s house? After he was beaten and raped and violated, was he forced to say _thank you_? If by ignorance or conceit Sebastian did wrong by this boy, he’ll never forgive himself.

Never.

Though, maybe he can start by not thinking of Kurt as a _boy_. Kurt is a free man, and if he’s going to make Kurt believe that, he’d better start remembering it.

“Really?” Sebastian asks, needing to hear from Kurt’s lips that he doesn’t hate him for what they did, that he doesn’t see him as one of the monsters who forced themselves on him.

Kurt finally raises his head to look in Sebastian’s face. His eyes are red in the low light, as are his cheeks. Sebastian frowns. Kurt’s been crying, but he counters Sebastian’s concerned expression with a slow-burning, goofy smile. “Really. I---I swear.” Kurt’s eyes drift to Sebastian’s chest, to the shirt clinging to his pecs. “But … but now you’re soaking wet.”

Sebastian shrugs. “A little water never hurt no one.” He runs his fingers through Kurt’s hair so he can better see his face. He tries to avoid comparisons, see Kurt for who he is, not who he looks like; absorb the joy on his bashful face. He doesn’t appear to feel bad, or guilty. He looks blissful, content.

Tired.

“Let’s put on some dry clothes and go to bed, hmm?” Sebastian stands from the chair with Kurt still on him, his arms and legs wrapped around him.

“Yeah.” Kurt rests his head on Sebastian’s shoulder as Sebastian carries him across the room. “Let’s.”

Sebastian smiles as Kurt nuzzles into his neck, thinking, _‘I have a feeling you’re goin’ to sleep good tonight, little one. Hopefully, so will I.’_

***

 _SNAP_!

“ _Ah_!”

A crack and a wail shakes Kurt from his sleep. He suspects it’s his own nightmares pummeling him awake, so he curls into Sebastian’s body, knowing there, in Sebastian’s heat and surrounded by the smell of his skin, he’ll have a place to hide and wait out the storm. But another crack, and a, “Please! I didn’t do nuthin’!” digs into his brain and opens his eyes.

“W-w-what is that?” Kurt’s drowsy brain asks, confused, but Sebastian is sure his body knows. His muscles jump and his limbs jerk every time a snap sounds, his back bowing as if trying to get away.

“I … I don’t want to tell you, darling,” Sebastian admits instead of lying. He’d suspected something like this might happen, the way the man at the gate seemed to garner so much amusement out of talking about those stocks, but he’d hoped Kurt’s orgasm would help him sleep through the night, no matter what that bastard pulled. “Try not to pay attention to it.” He wraps his arms around Kurt’s body, comforting him through sheer will since the sound shattering the silence has him bristling beneath his skin, too. “Just find yourself a happy memory and try to get lost there.”

It’s good advice. Too bad Sebastian can’t take it for himself.

Kurt trembles with every snap of the whip, whimpering louder to drown out the sound. He covers his ears, but it rings through his hands clapped over them. Sebastian wishes there was more going on to take Kurt’s attention away from it, but the town outside their window is deathly quiet - only one, maybe two other people out and about, tending to horses or looking for lodging for the night.

“C---can … can we leave?” Kurt begs, tears streaming hot down his cheeks. “C---can’t we get out of here? _Please_?”

“No, Kurt,” Sebastian says. “I’m sorry, but I … I still haven’t gotten …”

“I---I understand.” Kurt sniffles, rolling into the fetal position and sobbing into his knees. Sebastian’s heart launches into his throat, threatening to tear from his body and leave him, the final straw broken. He sympathizes with Kurt, he really does, but he’s not done yet. He’s so close, but he’s not quite there. If they leave Kennerstown, they’ll have to go for good. They can’t just leave for the night and return in the morning. They could get away with that in other towns, claim they’re going hunting, but not here. Here it’ll create too much suspicion. He needs one more day, maybe two. If Kurt can just get through tonight, and possibly tomorrow night ...

But how does he ask Kurt for that when he knows what being in this town means to him? When he looks like he’s about to claw the skin off his body in an attempt to get away?

At a loss for solutions, Sebastian kisses Kurt, hoping it will inspire thoughts of earlier – that warm, soapy bath, and his hands on Kurt’s body. Sebastian rolls Kurt on his back and raises his arms over his head, tangles their fingers together and pins him to the mattress. It’s a bit more aggressive than he’d planned on being with Kurt, but he can’t help it – anything he can do to pull them both away from this nightmare, he’ll do. He puts a hand to the back of Kurt’s head and kisses him deeper, pulling a moan from his throat. Kurt’s hips rise up in search of friction, and Sebastian rolls his down to meet him.

Whatever Kurt needs, he’ll give him if it buys him one more day.

It almost does the trick.

It’s when the bloodcurdling cries start that Sebastian’s kisses cease to do any good, and Kurt starts to shake out of his skull. There are some things Sebastian can’t make go away. Not yet.

And Sebastian knows they can’t stay.

Kurt’s crying will only get worse, and it’ll attract attention.

A dangerous type.

Besides (and Sebastian despises himself for not considering this first), Sebastian doesn’t want to scar Kurt, not after what he’s been through.

“Okay,” he whispers against Kurt’s moist cheek. “Okay. We’ll go. Right now. But we have to be quick, and we have to be quiet. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Kurt says, nodding more than necessary. “I understand.”

“Good.” He gives Kurt one last kiss, to give him strength for the road. “Let’s go.”

Sebastian helps Kurt dress, bundling him in a jacket, hat, and a blanket. It had been raining earlier, but it was clear out, so the why of so many layers has Kurt baffled. But he trusts Sebastian. Whatever the reason, he doesn’t need to tell Kurt for him to know it’s important. Sebastian settles up with the inn keeper, then leads Kurt out to the buckboard. Kurt takes a seat up front while Sebastian packs their things and hooks up his horse. Outside of their small inn room, the whip is gruesomely loud and inescapable, as is the crying that follows. It probably will be for miles, which means they’ll have to go far away from Kennerstown. Sebastian curses his foul luck, but he can’t bring himself to blame Kurt. Kurt had no part in this. It’s Sebastian who took it upon himself to ask about the damned stocks in the first place. Had he let the matter lie, they might not be in use right now.

He needs to start doing better by the people in his care.

Sebastian settles in beside Kurt, whose eyes have gone wide and dark, his skin pale and coated in sweat.

“Now, I need to warn you,” Sebastian says, “we’ll have to drive by it, darling.”

Kurt shakes his head, so vigorously it vibrates his entire body. “No! No, we can’t!”

“I’m sorry. It can’t be helped. There’s only one road out of town, and it takes us by the stocks. If we turn around or try to take another way, they’ll get suspicious, send someone after us. Just keep your head down and follow my lead. Don’t say a word. Alright?”

That’s fine by Kurt because he can’t speak. He loses the ability knowing that they’ll be getting closer to that sound before they can get away. Sebastian’s hand on his back gently pushes him, and Kurt curls into a ball, hiding his face with the brim of his hat, looking as miserable as he feels.

The buckboard creaks forward, Sebastian’s horse going at a walking pace when Kurt wishes the thing would run, infer the urgency in that way that animals do and take off like a wild thing, despite Sebastian’s tuts and commands. But Sebastian’s horse is not a disobedient creature, and good thing, too.

That animal’s cool head may yet save their lives.

Kurt doesn’t see a thing with his eyes squeezed tight, but he feels the sway of the buckboard, the slight breeze as it tugs at the edge of his hat. He hears the lashing grow louder as they get closer to the stocks, his stomach twisting till it becomes a knotted rope inside his belly, almost wringing loose its contents when Kurt hears the words, “What you two doin’ up?”

Sebastian pulls his buckboard up to the stocks and stops as casually as he pleases. He exudes calm - more calm than Kurt imagines he feels. “We’re headin’ out.”

“Why so late?” the man asks, flashing Sebastian a jackal smile.  

“I’m afraid my boy here might have the cough.”

The man’s smug sneer wilts and he takes a step back. “Wh-what?” He glares at Kurt with fear in his eyes. “He … Wh-why … _why would you bring him here if he had that_!?”

“He wasn’t showin’ any symptoms along the road. Didn’t even have a sniffle till late this afternoon.”

“Good God,” the man murmurs, crossing himself twice. Illness wasn’t much of a concern in their township. People lived fairly far apart. Little in the way of sickness traveled the distance. It was only in the cities where people tended to fall ill, and even then, the heat dried them out before it could catch on. But there were few illnesses more feared than one that invaded the lungs and refused to yield to the heat. It spread like wildfire, and could turn a city into a ghost town in under a month if it wasn’t stopped. That fear blossoms in the man’s eyes as he stares at the hunched figure huddled beneath Sebastian’s blanket.

“Now, like I said, I don’t know that he has it, but if he does, I’d rather not take the chance of it gettin’ any worse. You dig?”

“Yeah.” The man covers his mouth with his shirt collar and waves them on, eager to see them gone. “Yeah, I dig. Git yerselves on outta here then.”

“We will,” Sebastian says with a tip of his hat.

“Good luck to ye.”

“Thank you, kindly.”

Kurt figures he should do some acting, actually cough or something, but he’s too paralyzed to move. Sebastian lifts the blanket farther up his back, unintentionally knocking the hat from his head. The hood the blanket creates creeps down his neck as Kurt reaches a hand to pick it up.

The boy in the stocks lifts his sweaty head, his lip split, a black eye starting. Through one bulging eye he catches sight of Sebastian’s buckboard. He stares at it imploringly, praying silently for help, when something inside sparks an ember of hope in his chest, and he calls out, “K-Kurt? Is that you?”

“Shut _up_!” the man hollers, bringing the whip down on the poor boy’s back.

“ _Ah_! Kurt! Help! Help me, Kurt! Please!”

Kurt shivers by Sebastian’s side, the heels of his boots knocking against the floor of the buckboard. Sebastian brings another blanket up from the rear and covers Kurt with it, hiding him entirely from view.

“Kurt! Kurt, no! Don’t let them hurt me! Please! I did everything you said to do! Everything! I did nothing wrong!”

“My name isn’t Kurt, son,” Sebastian says as they pass, reacting quickly to draw suspicion away from his companion cowering beside him. “And I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

“No!” the boy cries as Sebastian turns his horse away and leads them off at a faster pace. “No, please! Don’t go! Kurt! Kurt, help me! Kurt …!”

“I said _shut the hell up_!” The whip crack, and the string of crying and begging it produces, follows Sebastian and Kurt as they make their way out of town, echoing like thunder in the sky.

“Don’t sit up just yet,” Sebastian warns, scanning the windows of the houses and buildings they pass while they’re still within the town’s borders. “We’re being watched.”

For all of his shaking, Sebastian feels Kurt nod.

“Isn’t … isn’t there anything we can do?” Kurt asks, finding his voice as the whipping and the screaming begin to fade away. Kurt is ashamed to admit he doesn’t remember that boy. He’s seen so many. But that doesn’t mean his heart doesn’t bleed for him. “Can’t we make them stop?”

“I’m sorry, little one,” Sebastian says, and he truly is sorry, not so much for that boy, though he _does_ feel for him. No one should have to go through what he’s going through now, especially not at that tender age. Flogging in the town square is a punishment usually reserved for horse thievery or drunken assault. That boy looked to be no more than ten. Eleven at the eldest. What a boy that young could do to deserve that kind of treatment, Sebastian doesn’t know. He’ll more than likely never know.

But Kurt does.

Kurt can’t escape his past. Pain seems destined to find him no matter how far he runs. And Sebastian, try as he might, can’t shield Kurt from it. Sebastian feels sorry for Kurt, sorrier than he could ever express. But there’s blessed little he can do for him other than keep him safe.

“I have to choose between him and you, darling. And I choose you.”

 

 

 


End file.
